Don't Fear the Joker
by chris dee
Summary: Cat—Tale 60: Scarecrow is the fear rogue. Everybody knows that. What if he realizes he's not the one they're afraid of?
1. Irene Adler

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 1: Irene Adler

* * *

Germs. The worst thing about winter. Marty Parks started the day with a hot shower—his showers were a lot hotter and a lot longer than they had been a week ago—and he scrubbed his skin raw with the scratchy new loofah. He'd always considered the loofah one of those silly, new agey things, but lately, he really didn't feel like a washcloth got him _clean_. He wanted something that would SCRUB. He wondered how sanitary they were though. He knew the loofah was some kind of fishy plant thing. It might not be that hygienic after you used it a couple times and then left it there, all wet, in the steamy bathroom. There was no telling what kind of mold or mildew might start growing in there. Impulsively, Marty threw his new loofah away once he had toweled off. They were cheap enough; he could get a new one. He was a working man, not made of money, but it was cold and flu season. You couldn't be too careful. If he got sick, he'd lose a lot more than the cost of buying a new loofah every week, that was for sure.

He checked to see that the iron was hot and laid out his uniform on the bed, giving the shirt and pants a good pressing before he put them on. He didn't used to be this meticulous about his appearance. He certainly didn't care about a few wrinkles in his shirt, but it occurred to him a few days ago that the heat of a really hot iron would kill any bacteria in the fabric. As an added bonus, it felt good, putting on the still-warm clothes before venturing out into the cold city. And he must look better. Patty in dispatch asked if he'd lost weight and Rick thought he got a haircut.

Once dressed, Marty put on his coat, but he waited until he was outside before using the hand sanitizer. After all, there was the doorknob inside his apartment, the one outside, the key and the lock. He'd touch all four on his way out. No point in sanitizing his fingers only to start rubbing them on all those microbe-infested surfaces seconds later.

* * *

"You know, Bruce, when we used to go out together, not only did you have fun, you weren't ashamed to _admit_ you were having fun."

"I'm enjoying the company," Bruce said affectionately. "I enjoyed the steak. I'm just not sure about the movie."

Alfred Pennyworth once observed that Bruce and Selina were married in every way that mattered and the difficulty was that they appeared not to have noticed. One of the many traits they shared with traditional married couples was that once they moved in together, they stopped dating. Catwoman might refer to the nights she joined Batman on patrol as "date nights," but for their non-masked personas, a regulation night on the town was a rarity.

It was Selina who insisted it was time to renew the practice. A new Sherlock Holmes movie had been made. That's not something the World's Greatest Detective and his adversary-cum-love interest could ignore. Since he was a boy, Bruce loved Sherlock Holmes. His father introduced him to the Conan Doyle novels and was careful to explain that this was a work of fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor before he ever became a writer, and all of Holmes's methods were based on the tools of observation and deduction that doctors used to diagnose disease, which Doyle learned from his mentor, a Dr. Joseph Bell. Bruce was quick to notice that the stories were narrated by another medical man-turned-writer, and Doyle must have thought a lot of Watson to have made him his stand-in in the stories that way. Thomas Wayne beamed proudly, and he told Bruce to remember that when he eventually saw the movies based on these books. "The actor Basil Rathbone gave the world a fine portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the best there will ever be, but the Dr. Watson you'll see in those movies is a fool and a buffoon. Nothing like the decorated soldier and professional man you read about here." For Selina, Bruce's love of Holmes was pivotal in recognizing her own feelings for him. It was seeing him so excited about a Sherlock Holmes exhibit at the mythology museum that obliterated any divisions that remained between Bruce and Batman in her mind. In that moment, seeing him so uncharacteristically exuberant putting a costume together for the party opening the exhibit, she saw the whole, complete man. It was so different from anything she had ever seen him do, in costume or out, and yet it was so utterly and completely _HIM_… and she loved him so much, it made the soul ache.

So, if a new Sherlock Holmes movie was about to be unleashed on the world, they simply had to see it.

* * *

Germs. The awful thing about winter. Everybody had a cold. Everybody was coughing and sneezing, saturating the air with their infectious breath. Just waiting in line for his coffee, Marty heard a half dozen coughs and sniffs from his fellow patrons.

He looked around to see if maybe the freebie guy was back. Tuesdays and Thursdays for the past three weeks, there had been a guy at the door with a basket of free samples. Little packets of Kleenex, lip balm, hand sanitizer and cough drops. Said he was from some company called Mommet & Hodmedod. It was a nice service, cold and flu season being what it is and then all the added concern this year with that H1N1 thing going around. Was a real public service. With the depot across the street, so many of the patrons in this particular Starbucks were drivers. The way they went all over the city, coming into contact with so much stuff—you never realized until you thought about it just how much germ-infested _STUFF_ you touch in a single day—why if they got sick, they could spread something nasty all over the city. That's why the freebie guy saved the hand sanitizer for the drivers. Most of the other patrons got the Kleenex or the cough drops, but whenever the freebie guy saw one of those uniforms, he reached into the basket and gave them…

Hey, there he was. Freebie guy from Mommet & Hodmedod, standing at the door with his basket of cold and flu season survival aids.

* * *

Bruce did not like going out to the movies, and Selina had offered to buy a bootleg on the street. Naturally, the judgmental jackass couldn't allow _that_, so out came the datebook and they decided on Friday night (since he had a finance meeting at WE that afternoon anyway. If he actually went to it, it would placate Lucius for a while, freeing up Bruce to blow off next week's budget meetings, which he couldn't stand). So Alfred booked them a table at d'Annunzio's, and Selina bought a new dress for the occasion.

During the short walk from the restaurant to the theater, Bruce expressed his misgivings. He had seen a television ad for this movie several times on the jumbotron in Times Square, and as one who loved Sherlock Holmes since he was a boy, he had some very serious misgivings. Holmes wasn't anybody's idea of an action hero. Yes, there was more adventure than true detective work in the original stories, but the thing about a legendary character like Holmes was the image that everyone had of him: consulting detective, deerstalker hat, pipe, "elementary," "the game's afoot."

"And Inspector Lestrade is a moron," Selina added happily. "Please don't forget that part. It's a detail near and dear to my heart."

Bruce grunted, and Selina suggested that, moron cops aside, Bruce should try to keep an open mind. Worst case scenario, it was a night out…

* * *

Germs. Marty could feel them on his hands. Squirming around in his pores. Germs. Bugs. Cooties. Bacteria. Fungus. Viruses. Spores. There was a little film on his fingers. Not quite oily, not quite sweat, but if he rubbed the pad of his thumb against index and middle fingers, he could feel a little trace of something. The skin wasn't bone dry, there was just enough moisture that the skin felt… well, it didn't feel like rubbing his thumb along the paper cup from Starbucks. There was no telling what microbes were swimming around in that film and diving into his pores. It made your skin crawl if you thought about it. There was no telling what was in there. Germs. Bacteria. Fungus. Spores. Swine Flu. Bird Flu. Horse Flu. Ferret Flu. There was even a Seal Flu listed on the internet. Asian Flu. Spanish Flu. Hong Kong Flu…

Marty set down his coffee and reached into his pocket, pulling out the new sample bottle from Freebie Guy and gave his fingers another good treatment. You couldn't be too careful. There was no telling what might be in the air in this filthy city. Germs, Bugs, Viruses, Spores. He could just feel them, crawling all over his hands and fingers.

It was no wonder, you touched so many things in the course of a day, things that were teaming with germs and microbes—right now, his keys, the handle on the truck, the steering wheel, all breeding grounds for germs and disease…

* * *

Two hours later, walking from the theater to a little wine bistro Selina wanted to try on 44th, Bruce was quiet.

"It's okay to admit you liked it," Selina prompted.

Bruce said nothing.

A block later, she tried again:

"That the sort of thing that goes through your mind when you fight? 'First, distract target. Then block his blind jab. Counter with cross to left cheek. Dazed, he'll attempt wild haymaker. Weaken right jaw. Then fracture. Break cracked ribs. Heel kick to the diaphragm…'"

"Not in that kind of detail," Bruce graveled.

"Summary," Selina continued quoting, mimicking his gravel, "ears ringing, jaw fractured, three ribs cracked, four broken, diaphragm hemorrhaging. Physical recovery: six weeks. Full psychological recovery: six months."

"You memorized the entire film?"

"That bit made an impression," Selina giggled. "It was very sexy. It was very _you_."

They entered the bar, sat at a table, ordered, and Bruce checked his watch.

"Very good, you've held out for twenty minutes. You can go ahead and say it."

"Say what, that the scrumptious combination of detective intellect and kick ass fighting skills wasn't the only thing in that movie that was 'very you'?"

"Yes, you've gone this long without speaking her name. Let's get it over with."

"Whose name?

Bruce glared. And Selina grinned wider.

"Her name… a woman?

His jaw tightened.

"_The_ woman?"

"Irene Adler, yes."

Selina sipped her wine with a canary-feather smile.

"How many times did they mention that she'd always outwitted him?"

"I counted four."

"She kicked ass, too."

"And got in over her head and needed to be rescued."

"Ah, but so did he. She reciprocated quite quickly."

"He caught her in the end."

"It was perfectly obvious she was going to be out of those cuffs in two minutes—even if he didn't slip the key down her blouse."

"He recovered the maharaja's diamond."

"Yes, well…"

"Yes, well…"

Again she sipped, and so did he.

"You liked the movie?"

He grunted.

* * *

Disease. H1N1, H2N2, H5N1, H7N7, H7N2, N7N3. Marty could smell it in the closed air of the driver's compartment. There was a global pandemic, after all, that's why they were giving out the hand sanitizers. And here he was, in a closed in compartment. He foolishly turned on the heat without being really clear on how car heaters worked. He seemed to remember the air was drawn in across the engine, where it picked up the heat from all the gears and pistons. There was NO TELLING what else it might pick up as it was drawn across all that filthy metal.

What was even worse, the air was recycled. Just because the car was armored, how ridiculous was that? What was more deadly: the one in a million chance that some whacko would be pumping knockout gas into the cabin or the dead on certainty that he was breathing air poisoned by the billions of microbes teaming over all that cash in the back? There was more bacteria on a twenty dollar bill than there was on a toilet seat, for god's sake! Cash was the filthiest, most unsanitary substance you could handle, and here he was riding around with bundles of the stuff!

Marty had to pull over, he was so sickened by the thought. He could practically feel the germs squirming in the air as it traveled up his nose, squirming down his throat, squirming around inside his very lungs! He couldn't sit in this enclosed cabin with air being poisoned from all those toxic dollars a moment longer. He fumbled with his keys, searching for the one that would open the rear doors so he could rid himself of that poisonous payload.

* * *

_The_ woman… not a bad title. Selina wouldn't have minded it, but of course, Bruce was more territorial than Holmes. In the mind that stuck that emblem on every item he owned, it would be "The Batman's woman." All in all, she was better off as she was. Well, apart from the waiting. Catwoman stretched out on a gargoyle across from One Police Plaza, lying on her stomach, legs bent at the knees, her feet moving back and forth in a slow rhythm. Waiting… waiting… waiting…

It was bound to happen eventually. Two nights a week hanging out with Batman, sooner or later that signal was going to light up. She went as far as Pearl Street, swinging on a path parallel to his, he on his batline and she on her whip. She veered off towards Chatham when he went straight at the intersection, towards police HQ. She headed for the rooftop where she occasionally hid in the old days to watch the proceedings at the Batsignal. Batman had spotted her both times. She was sure he remembered, but she didn't expect him to comment on it tonight. Yet, as soon as she lashed the fire escape at the corner of Pearl and Chatham, breaking off the parallel path from his, he graveled in the OraCom: _..:: Be sure to check under the fire hoses. ::.. _

She did. The hoses on that particular roof were kept in a white metal casing, and affixed to the bottom with magnets, she found what could only be described as a "Bat box". Black metal, roughly the size of a phone book, with the inevitable bat emblem in a gold oval etched on the face. He was so territorial, you had to love him. Catwoman pushed the emblem, guessing it was a pressure release, and the front of the box opened to reveal a pair of binoculars and a pillow. She passed on the pillow, useful only if you meant to kneel on the edge of the roof, but she took the binoculars and settled on the gargoyle to watch.

That was nearly fifteen minutes ago. After the first minute of conversation, Batman followed Commissioner Muskelli inside. Since then, all she could see was the occasional swish of a cape inside his office window. She made a note to herself to return to the roof in the morning and add a few candy bars to the Bat box.

* * *

"Seven armored cars altogether," Muskelli said grimly. "That we know of. Only the first driver recovered enough to contact anyone. The others were still hiding out in their homes when we went looking for them. Naturally, you'd think if any more cars didn't reach their destinations, it would have been reported by now, but—"

"_Legitimate_ recipients would have reported it," Batman interrupted. "But Gotham Armor services the First Bank of Brighton Beach, which launders money for the Russian and Irish mobs and King Snake. There are regular runs from the bank to the airport. First order of business is to make sure none of those runs were scheduled for today or tonight. If any were, confirm the car arrived at its destination."

"And if it didn't?"

"Then Scarecrow bought himself more trouble than he can possibly imagine. If he's absconded with several million of the Russians' money, they'll hit back hard. Assuming they fail, which is likely given their track record against rogues, he'll hit back hard."

"Am I terrible person if I like the idea of Constantine Volsky in the grip of Scarecrow's fear toxin?"

Batman grunted.

"Well, it's the worst case scenario," Muskelli said, resuming a serious tone. "I'll let you know as soon as we find out for sure if there are any more missing cars that didn't complete their deliveries."

"And I'll track down Crane based on the cars and drivers we do know."

* * *

The aftereffects of fear toxin can continue from 48 to 72 hours after the hallucinations run their course. The victim may hyperventilate, experience headaches, earaches, heart palpitations, and sweaty palms. Those with high blood pressure or poor circulation often suffer hot flashes or chills. Batman had worked through more fear hangovers than anyone, and he knew it's not a time when anyone wants to entertain. If you absolutely _had_ to admit visitors into your home and answer questions from a faceless stranger in a mask, he figured Catwoman would be the less terrifying inquisitor. She'd do the talking while he looked around.

The first stop was Ray Penkel on Staten Island, the first driver to abandon his route. Penkel was a twenty year man, divorced with no children. Lived in half a rented duplex that he shared with a high school math teacher. While Selina walked him through his story, Batman noted that the math teacher was the sloppier roommate… that both men skimped on food and furnishings but splurged on a flat screen TV, PS3, and football-based video games… Penkel read the Gotham Post while the math teacher read the Times… and given the number of photos on the premises, Penkel was still fond of his ex-wife. There was nothing to cast any light on the Scarecrow angle.

The next guard-driver, Mike Dopple, was a retired cop. He did not consider Catwoman the kind of person to open up to after a day becoming scared out of his senses. He particularly didn't like the look of her claws. In the time it took him to tell her so—and for her to respond that she didn't like the look of his beer gut and double chin, but you didn't see her refusing so speak to him because of it—Batman looked past him into the living room. It looked like a dozen other officers' homes he'd seen over the years. Sensing that Dopple was the kind of cop who considered Batman more of a criminal than the rogues he fought, he decided to table the interview. There were five other drivers to talk to, and if those interviews told them nothing, he could always send Robin.

Tamra Ramirez was next. Having driven a Humvee for three years in Iraq without incident, she was pissed more than traumatized. Less than a year after getting back to Gotham – less than a year, after surviving three in Iraq, _three_ – Scarecrow – Fear toxin – it was infuriating. To be turned into a whimpering little wuss by a straw man with a chemistry set! Selina had her work cut out for her, getting a coherent story from Ramirez when every few minutes in the telling, her anger spiked all over again. Rather than defusing it, Catwoman seemed to share the indignation. Everything in their body language said the women understood each other perfectly, and Batman heard an edge in their voices that made him think that if Jonathan Crane were to walk in the door at that moment, he could just stand aside and let the women tear him to pieces.

Larry McKenna was next, since he lived in the same Brooklyn neighborhood as Ramirez. Then it was out to Queens to see a Leonard Washington and back to Gotham proper to interview a Marty Parks. By this time, Batman knew what to expect. All the drivers were telling the same basic story. Different details, different times, places and payloads, but they all had the same basic experience: a gradually mounting concern about their health, perfectly reasonable given the H1N1 coverage in the media, erupting to acute germophobia that caused them to open their armored cars and dump their payloads in the grip of a full out panic attack. Parks was just getting to the point where he opened up the truck to get rid of the germ-infested cash—and either he would notice the blue pickup like Ramirez, Penkel, and Washington had, or he wouldn't, like McKenna…

"So then it occurs to me, you know what's covered in germs? Money. And here I am in a closed up car that's filled with it. So I start to think—"

"What's this?" Batman asked sharply.

"AAH!" Parks screamed. He leapt up from his chair, his eyes as big as saucers, and even after Catwoman got him settled again, he was panting like he'd run a marathon. "I forgot he was here," Parks told her, embarrassed.

"He does that," Catwoman said soothingly. "It's part of the whole 'cape' thing. Don't worry about it. Everybody yelps, even the ones who didn't have a Scarecrow episode a few hours ago."

She smiled conspiratorially, and Parks smiled back.

"You had a question?" she said, turning to Batman with a smooth mistress of ceremonies manner.

"This bottle," Batman said, holding out a small plastic bottle he'd taken from the living room trashcan. "Insta-Pure. Ramirez had one identical to it on her kitchen sink."

"Yeah, that's a hand sanitizer. I got it a few days ago. Guy was giving them out at the coffee shop by the depot."

Batman's eyes met Catwoman's as he slid the bottle into his belt.

"That one's empty, that's why I threw it out," Parks said unnecessarily. "I got a new one this morning. It's in my coat pocket if you want to see."

* * *

Frightful! How could so much go so wrong in so little time? How was it possible?

Scarecrow must have repeated the question a thousand times since escaping—if putting a spin on his own body after Batman's right hook could be called "escaping." It's not like he was free yet. He managed to be thrown out the window instead of onto the floor, and then he ran-tumbled-ran-stumbled-fell down three flights of rusty fire escape. He might be free momentarily, but something on the rusty fire escape had torn into his costume, leaving a trail of straw as he ran. He couldn't get that far before Batman showed anyway, so his best option seemed to be hiding.

How could so much go so wrong in so little time?

Hiding options were limited in an alley: he could dive into a smelly dumpster or he could follow a smelly homeless guy through a door. There wasn't time for fact-finding, Batman would be there any second—and he was likely to search the dumpster. Scarecrow tore away as much extra cloth and straw as he could while running around in a circle. He looked like one of his own toxin victims, but at least there was less chance of leaving a trail. He bolted through the door, and then—

"Welcome to St. Swithuns's Shelter, my son."

How?

"I don't think I've seen you hear before. Is it your first time?"

How?

"Don't worry, my son, there's no judgment here. Here's a ticket for a hot meal when the kitchen opens at seven. You can have a warm bed for the night, right over there."

How?

How, how, how could so much go so wrong in so little time?

* * *

… … … … :: Duty Log: Batman :: … … …

(cont.)

small type on the bottom of the bottle reading "Packaged by Mommet & Hodmedod" with an address on Water Street. Contacted Oracle to activate Crane Protocol 4-B on my mark. Robin was placed on stand-by to defuse and dismantle whatever trap was waiting at the Water Street location. Proceeded to satellite cave with Catwoman and analyzed contents of bottle.

Contents proved to be a functioning hand sanitizer with an alcohol content of 62% and a fear toxin compound of 4% to trigger slow onset germophobia, which naturally fostered repeated use of the product. Consulting formula for this particular toxin (REF: Directory K3M-W4R-CR4N3, Sub: Formulas 17), I identified unique combination of ingredients which had been recently purchased through mail order. Items were delivered to an "agricultural chemist" on Fletcher Avenue, only eight blocks from the trap location on Water Street.

Catwoman elected to stay home, as face-to-face rogue confrontation was inevitable. Coordinated with Robin so he tripped the Water Street entrance just as I burst in on Scarecrow on Fletcher. Caught him literally counting his money. Recovered in excess of $3 million cash and additional $1 million in diamonds from the seven armored car robberies, although Scarecrow escaped capture.

* * *

Batman saved the logs, then swiveled the chair slowly towards the costume vault. The one downside of the satellite cave, the downside of spending the night at the penthouse: no Alfred. There would be no kimono to change into. He could either ride up to the penthouse in costume, or change back into the suit he'd worn on the date before patrol.

He stepped into the vault, removing his cowl – and saw the suit had been removed. Folded in its place lay an embroidered robe from the penthouse. Pinned to the top was a note:

_Be smarter than your counterpart, Sherlock.  
Don't keep your Irene waiting.  
-Meow_

* * *

Every rogue suffered setbacks. Since the moment Batman started pummeling crooks in Gotham, every rogue knew what it was like to have your perfect plan split apart at the seams. First one stitch pops, then two, then six, then there's a loud ripping noise and the whole side falls open at once—much like Jonathan Crane's trousers. A scarecrow costume in tatters may have helped him blend in at the homeless shelter, but that was a small comfort under the circumstances.

Every rogue suffers setbacks, but usually the rock bottom moment happens in the Arkham infirmary, not in the St. Swithuns Fletcher Avenue Shelter under a sign reading "Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.' Deuteronomy 15". At least in Arkham you were surrounded by your peers. They might not be sympathetic, but there was a sense of camaraderie. There was a common language, a common experience. Sometimes the guy in the next bed could even help you figure out what went wrong with your perfect plan. But here? Here they were in a lockdown because the Batmobile was sighted in the area.

"Yeah, I heard that too," somebody said in a hushed tone. "The Bat, too. Bluxo said he seen the Bat chasin' somebody."

This was met with murmurs of fear that Scarecrow normally would have enjoyed. The people around him were afraid. You could feel it in the air, hear it in their voices, see it in their shifty eyes and their fidgeting hands. They were afraid—but they weren't afraid of Batman, and they weren't afraid of the rogue he was actually chasing (oh, if they only knew he was sitting right there, huddled among them). No, what made this a true rock bottom moment for Jonathan Crane was that the entire shelter was in lockdown and the inmates inside petrified with fear because Batman was in the neighborhood _and he might be chasing Joker_.

Might be.

He. Was. A. Clown.

Yet people feared the Joker. Despite the smile, despite the laugh, despite the big shoes, everyone was terrified. Harley Quinn was a jester and a giggly twit, but simply because wherever she was, Joker might not be far behind, they were afraid of her too.

This was rock bottom, alright. Sitting around with the human refuse of Fletcher Avenue, hearing the celebrities among them (two guys called Bluxo and Sarge) relating their long ago encounter with the mad clown himself. Scarecrow only half-listened. The story didn't interest him. Only the rapt fear of the listeners. He didn't scare anyone this way. He had to use chemicals to get a rise out of anybody.

Clearly, he had a lot to learn from Joker.

* * *

To be continued…


	2. More Cowbell

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 2: More Cowbell

* * *

Knives. Scissors. Razors. Blades everywhere. Everywhere you looked, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere – in an asylum full of homicidal psychos. Kevin Boda turned on his heel and quietly made his way to the door. No job was worth it. No way…

Eyes. Eyes were watching. Rosa Crite was no longer doing her job at the check-in desk. She was acting the part of doing her job. It was all poses and pantomime for whoever was watching her. There were cameras, of course. It was the entrance to the high security wing, even the staff had a special check-in station before they could pass beyond Rosa's desk into the red zone, so of course there were cameras watching all the time. That was the norm. Not like today. Today, there were _other_ eyes watching, she could feel it. Rosa played along, pretending to do her job. She wouldn't do anything to attract attention. She would wait for her break, then she would collect her things and walk down the hall, like always. Instead of going into the break room, she'd walk right past it like she was going to the soda machine. Nobody watching would think anything of that. Then she would walk just as calmly and naturally out the door. Whatever they were planning with those peering eyes, they wouldn't get her. No sir, she was going straight home, close all the blinds so that nobody could see in, and stay there for a very long time. Nobody would see her do anything for the rest of the week.

Worms! Snakes! Slithering, creepy, crawling—AHHHHHH! Gavin Worsted ran screaming from the parking lot. "Don't forget your nametag?" the thin, bookish figure called after him, picking the combination nametag/key card from the puddle where it had fallen. "Oh, look at that," Jonathan Crane smiled wickedly. "Try and warn a fellow he's getting a flat tire, what does he do but leave his ID in a pothole." A malevolent snicker followed, while Jonathan slid the card into his pocket. He returned to his car, adjusted his wig, and turned back onto the main road towards Arkham.

It really was much easier, getting to the Arkham staff from the outside, as they went about their daily lives. Much easier. Their guard was up on the inside, but out here in the world, at the laundromat, at the supermarket, pumping gas at the mini-mart near the asylum, it was shooting fish in a barrel. The only real challenge was figuring out the time release on Boda and Crite's doses. Boda was a 220 pound guard, Crite a 130 pound nurse administrator, and he didn't know when either of them ate dinner. It was difficult to be precise about when, exactly, the toxin would kick in, so he hedged his bets, giving each a phobia that should provoke a quiet exit rather than the screaming flight Mr. Worsted had just demonstrated.

So much for getting in. Jonathan Crane's knowledge of the asylum procedures let him waltz in through the employee entrance and passageways as far as Rosa Crite's desk. Gavin Worsted's keycard got him through security station as it had through all the others, and no Rosa Crite was sitting there to check that his appearance matched the photo on the keycard. No Kevin Boda was there to relieve, and once again, no Rosa Crite was there to notice his absense or expect either of them to sign a shift changeover sheet. It really was ridiculously easy getting as far as Joker's cell. Once he got there, however…

"HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!"

…the situation became a bit more complicated.

* * *

It's not unusual for a man to make some gesture after a particularly enjoyable date. Most send flowers the next day, but Bruce was not "most men". He was Batman. He wanted to do something personal. So he took a few minutes before his morning workout and set up a new keyword matrix to sift the autodownloads.

"You made me a search routine?" Selina asked, that 'you're so cute when you're a geek' smile dancing on her lips.

"Selina, every night the Batcomputer downloads massive amounts of information from all sorts of public and private mainframes."

"I know, I remember my first visit to this cave very well, thank you. You download everything that exists in digitalia and you've got this Gordian knot of algorithms sifting it while you sleep, tagging all the keywords that pertain to all the rogues and ferreting out potential targets and clues for you to read through after your workout. Everything works splendidly (grunt) until some soccer team in Barcelona calls themselves 'Demons' and you have to recalibrate. I get that. I just don't quite get—oh my god, a new Bastet temple in Alexandria? When did they find that?"

Bruce's lip twitched.

"Four hours ago," Bruce said coolly, the pride in his equipment and his subroutines betrayed only by a subtle pat of the control as his fingers slid to the keyboard to pull the full datastream. "These digital photographs were sent to the Supreme Council of Antiquities funding the dig, and it looks like a Mr. Hendawi from the Cairo office will be writing up the press release later this week once the details are confirmed."

"Large number of statues depicting the cat-goddess Bastet found in the ruins," Selina murmured as she skimmed the documents. "thought to belong to Queen Berenice, wife of King Ptolemy III who ruled Egypt in the 3rd century B.C… first trace of the long-sought location of Alexandria's royal quarter… would indicate that the worship of the ancient Egyptian cat-goddess continued during the later, Greek-influenced, Ptolemaic period!" This last quote was followed by a loud, girlish squeal (which upset several of the bats overhead) and her throwing her arms around Bruce with a warm, wet kiss, as if he personally brought about the Ptolemaic-era worship of the cat-goddess Bast.

"You're welcome," he said softly, touching the tip of his thumb to her lips and then letting his index finger stroke gently under her chin. "Enjoy your present. I'll be in the chem lab working on an antidote for the new fear toxin."

* * *

"You mean just GO?!" Joker asked incredulously. "Just walk out the door, what kind of an escape is that?!"

"Out the fire exit," Scarecrow explained again. "It's a perfectly good way to get out. I have air transportation waiting."

"A balloon!" Joker cried. "With my own delightful grin painted on, so they'll see us smiling as we float away!"

"A helicopter," Scarecrow said testily. "A balloon would be far too slow, and easily shot down."

"It has no style, I won't go," Joker said firmly, and Scarecrow rubbed his brow. "A Joker escape is an event, sir. It is a happening. There are expectations. I can't just WALK OUT THE DOOR."

"Yes, you can," Crow insisted, poking at the Joker's chest with his index finger. "You put one foot in front of the other until we're out on the roof, then we take off, you say thank you, and we're out of here!"

"Exactly, saying thank you! No 'Thank you, you've been a great audience' before I depart? It's rude, sir. Rude, I say. I shall not compromise the integrity of the Joker brand with such an inferior departure."

"Fine, what's it going to take? Banana peels? Banana cream pie? Leave a bucket of acid balanced on the door when we go? Will that satisfy you?"

Joker raised an eyebrow, then he clapped his hands and became all business.

"Okay, if we're going to do this, we'll need a hatchet, a willing chicken, and some snakes."

"I literally cannot tell if you're serious," Scarecrow said flatly.

"I am always serious," Joker said, with as grim a deadpan as he could manage under that permanent grin. Then… "HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA! Just joshing you, ya lopsided bag o' hay. Bucket of acid over the door will do fine. We'll make up for it next time. Instead of a chicken—flamingos! HAHAHAHAHA! Harley always did like pink. Set that up that bucket, and then we'll go and get you that brain."

* * *

Selina had padded silently into the chem lab and watched. Unable to see exactly what Bruce was doing at the work table, she decided to forego the pounce she had planned. A pounce was always fun—but not if there were samples of fear toxin to be knocked over. So instead of a vigorous outburst of impassioned felinity, she just quietly cleared her throat.

"Is that a purr?" Bruce asked without turning.

"More than a purr. I just found… Bruce, the downloads you tagged for me, the Joshua Bell tour schedule is in there. So is information on a chocolate tasting tour of Paris. Now, at the risk of stating the obvious: that's not art, it's not jewels, and it's not cats. Even if I went for the idea of stealing Joshua Bell's Stradivarius on the 'catgut' angle—which is a stretch—there's no way to work the chocolate tasting into a cat crime."

"Of course not," Bruce said, turning to face her. "I didn't recreate the algorithm for Batman to identify potential Catwoman targets, Selina, I made it for you."

"So in with all the cats and Cartier, there's Joshua Bell and chocolate—"

"And Irene Adler and Chanel and that Dan Brown book you were enjoying so much last week and—mph-mm-mmm."

Caution was tossed aside, and Selina had flung herself forward to impart another passionate kiss.

* * *

Scarecrow had been uncertain what to do about Harley. On the one hand, she was part of Joker's shtick. If he was going to observe the mad clown in action— study the beast in his element, so to speak—he should provide everything thatJoker was used to having. That's why he had the Z make him a Ha-Hacienda instead of replacing the lair Batman discovered the night of the armored car robberies with one of a similar theme. Unfortunately, "everything Joker was used to having" included Harley Quinn and not some generic henchwench he could pick up at the Iceberg and dress in tassels instead of straw. Harley was fine as wenches went, but she didn't have as flexible a relationship with reality as Joker did. Joker had a way of going along with whatever he was presented with. If Scarecrow was hanging around the hacienda acting as if they had already agreed on a team-up, there would be a team-up. With Harley, you could never be sure. She might just assume Mistah J had knowingly agreed to all this, or she might not. If she didn't, he'd have to explain. That would be mortifying. Joker telling the whole Iceberg that Scarecrow had come to him for "Fear lessons". _HAHAHAHA._ "A little peer review, eh, Professor?" _Not funny._

On the other hand, Harley might just accept the situation as easily as Joker did. If she did, she'd be an asset. She already knew how Joker worked: what he liked, what he didn't like—and she provided an alternative target. Even in the interests of science, even in the service of this current mission to uncover the formula for ultimate fear, Joker really wasn't somebody you wanted to be alone with if you could help it. Harley was a distraction. So Jonathan decided to include her. It turned out to be the right decision. She was a distraction that knew her way around a regulation Hacienda. She could look over the invoice left by the Z and explain which items were expected (tangerine colored chairs, red stripped curtains, "festive" pillows, barrels of glue, glitter, silly putty, battery acid, and confetti) and which were the Z's trademark extras bought on your nickel to entertain themselves (vintage Donkey Kong machine, paintball gear for 7, and a brick barbecue pit).

Once the ha-ha-happy couple were settled in—a process that consisted of Joker playing Donkey Kong for half an hour while Harley went out to buy Ho Hos and Ding Dongs—Scarecrow began carefully laying out his plan so Joker could, well, "Joker it up" a little.

* * *

Selina stared at the viewscreen, pale with disbelief as a pair of radiant cut, fancy yellow diamonds were displayed from several angles in an automated slideslow.

"This is the most revolting thing I've seen since that mummy chamber," she said hoarsely.

"You're not still on that Cairo story," Bruce said, coming over to her workstation and glancing at the screen over her shoulder.

"Oh no, all done with that. I just mentioned the mummy because—long story. Temple outside of Belize. There was a jaguar god, there was a jaguar altar, there was a booby trap and I fell through it onto a pile of skulls, and there was a mummy. Occasionally, cliché is served and crime really doesn't pay. Point is, it was really disgusting for an hour or two. It held the record for just how icky something cat-related and valuable can be—until now. These… these are lab-grown diamonds… made from cats."

Bruce said nothing. He just stared blankly at the screen. Selina continued.

"DNA2Diamonds," she quoted. "They say they'll make these lab-grown, heirloom quality gemstones from the hair or ashes of—I can't say it—of a departed pet. Now, much as I love Shimbala and Nirvana, much as I love Whiskers and Nutmeg, I don't see making them into _earrings_."

"It does seem a little odd," Bruce admitted. He didn't say it out loud, but privately it reminded him of the sort of thing certain League villains had attempted: encasing Superman, Wonder Woman and other heroes in high pressure, high temperature incubators that simulated conditions below the Earth's crust, with the stated objective of pressing them into uniquely powered gemstones.

"Yep, they'll do people," Selina said, as if she was privy to his thoughts—but really because she was following some line of thought of her own. "Have grandma made into a broach to match the Fido and Spot earrings. This is just nuts. I mean technically it is diamonds and cats, but if I was still working, I wouldn't touch these things with a bargepole."

* * *

Joker threw his hands up over his head as if he was signaling a touchdown, then stretched them out wide, letting out a loud yawn.

"Bor-ing!" he sang. "It's just so borrrrrrrring. Hey, did you hear that, I rolled the 'r', like that French guy that thought he was Batman. Okay, so, straw-for-brains, why go after this bug eye dude?"

"Bugidole," Scarecrow corrected. "Dr. Rupert Bugidole, of the Behavior Sciences Institute, because he is a BULLY!"

"Yeah, learn a new song already," Joker yawned. "I mean, why pick on the bully all the time? Where's the funny?"

"Bullies dominate, blame, and use others," Scarecrow said in his stiffest Professor Crane delivery. "They lack empathy and foresight, and do not accept responsibility for their actions. They are concerned only about themselves and crave attention, due to their deservedly low self-esteem. It is that lack of self-esteem that leads them to put other people down in order to feel better about themselves."

"Pbbbbbbt," Dr. Quinzel replied. "Completely outdated thinking, Dr. Crane. The typical bully has an inflated sense of self-worth, a sense of entitlement and superiority over others, which results in the lack compassion, as well as deficiencies in the areas of impulse control and social skills."

"Oh I must object," Crane said, shaking his head vigorously. "The supposed ego and sense of superiority is a blind, an attempt to conceal from themselves their own self-loathing. They despise themselves for their many inadequacies, and mask it with a superficial arrogance. They would prefer to interact normally, but lacking the capacity to do so, they tell themselves that they are above such things."

Joker sat there, staring into space, as Harley and Jonathan debated the finer points of paranoia, sadism, borderline personality disorder, socialization disorder, and negative trickledown.

"It's just not funny," he said at last. "Not ha-ha funny. Not COULDN'T YOU JUST DIE funny. It's the other funny. The _odd_ funny. The 'reason people like you two never had a date in high school' funny."

"Hey! I went on plenty of dates," Harley cried.

"Guys named Todd don't count," Joker said simply.

Harley had to think about that for a second… she hadn't dated a single guy named Todd, but by the time she was ready to say so, Joker had moved on:

"The thing is, Craney, when a bully gives some little twirp a wedgie, that's funny. Why would you want to ruin it? Cancer survivors, that's who you want to go after – or maybe liver disease. Oh, or maybe those kids with the cleft palates. Basically, anything there's a colored ribbon for, that's some USDA Prime Grade-A funny."

"Too bad those department store Santas are outta season, ain't it, Puddin'?" Harley said. "No wait, not department store, oh you know what I mean. Those whatchamacallits, the bell-ringers."

"The Salvation Army," Scarecrow said absently.

"YEAH THEM!" Harley cheered.

"See, there ya go!" Joker said happily. "There's nothing funnier than a heap of dead Santas. They're like baby seals in red hats. HAHAHAHAHAAA!"

It wasn't helpful. Okay, Joker was crazy. Scarecrow knew that when he began. But "crazy" on its own was nothing. You couldn't say a mad man did mad things because he is mad—not unless you were Jervis, and that was another conversation entirely. But there had to be something that made the screwy inanity make sense. A guy walking around in a sailor suit, no pants, speaking unintelligibly and getting into fights—well, he's crazy. Until you find out he thinks he's Donald Duck. Still crazy, but now the crazy _makes sense_.

Joker's crazy didn't make any sense. It all seemed so random and so extreme. A put-on. You'd almost think he was a perfectly sane sociopath pretending to be a madman—except, of course, that that would be crazy. Ha ha ha.

"Look," Scarecrow said, exasperated. "Assuming I can find us some… 'funnier' victims, what do you think about the rest of it?"

Joker scratched his head.

"What are we doing to them again? Oh, right, scaring the pants off them."

"Without fear toxin," Crane said quickly.

"Thank Chaplin, something new. Okay, scary, scary, scary… what's scary. Oh, HAHAHAHA, I got it, werewolves!"

"I really don't think—"

"Yeah, you're right. They shed on the carpet. Okay what else?"

"Ventriloquist dummies are pretty creepy, Puddin'."

Joker and Scarecrow considered it, but they decided Arnold Wesker would take it the wrong way.

* * *

"Key-4," Selina said, scrunching up her nose. "A paper-thin square of C-4 to slide into a reinforced door to blast it open."

"Sounds effective," Bruce noted.

"Pfft, I hate blowing safes, I hate blowing doors. It's for amateurs. I like to take the high road."

"The… high road," Bruce said, sensing feline logic was about to enter the conversation."

"Yes, the high road. You _crack_ a safe, you _ pick_ a lock, you show the scowling crimefighter a little leg and suggest fun and novel uses for a batarang that never occurred to him. Nothing goes boom."

"…"

* * *

Scarecrow was beginning to think he was being played. He had stolen a helicopter, broken Joker out of Arkham, and paid for an entire furnished Hacienda including buying the Z a vintage Donkey Kong machine. He was supposed to be getting some kind of insight into Joker's power to generate fear, but Joker didn't seem to be taking the scheme at all seriously. This couldn't be how he planned his own crime sprees. He was just… he was having Harley dress up in these little outfits. He sat there, while Jonathan preferred to stand, as she pranced out in one getup after another. So far they'd seen her as Morticia Adams, a zombie with a disgusting amount of gore oozing from a gaping wound in her midsection, Anne Boleyn after the beheading, and a Lovecraftian Elder Thing (which Jonathan found strangely alluring and if Harley was anyone else's wench…)

"Okay, this is the best one yet!" Harley called, before making her appearance as...

"That Christmas Future guy?" Joker said.

"The Grim Reaper," Crow corrected.

"The what?" Joker said blankly.

"The Grim Reaper."

"I don't follow."

"Death incarnate. Reaper of souls. See the scythe, that makes it the reaper."

"You know, Puddin', the guy from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey?" the Reaper said helpfully, before breaking into an abbreviated macarena and rapping "_You might be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper._"

Joker's eyeballs rolled up towards Scarecrow and then Harley without moving his head.

"I really don't think this is going to scare anyone without toxin," Joker said firmly. "Maybe even then. The lemmings are sheep, but it's hard to fear a guy who let a couple stoner wannabe musicians sink his battleship."

"Puddin', I think lemmings are actually lemmings. Sheep are different."

"Could we possibly get back to the original subject," Scarecrow said, ripping the scythe from Grim Harley's grasp. "Look, the reaper is DEATH. Everyone's afraid of death. Here, give me that."

He hurried Harley through removal of the cloak, donned it himself. Even without the black gloves and ski mask, the costume was far more imposing on his tall, pencil thin frame. Giving the hood a final adjustment, he raced at Joker scythe in hand, and hovered over him poised to strike, a petrifying apparition that would shrivel the soul to an icy jelly.

Joker peered up at him silently for what seemed like a full minute, and Jonathan's spirit soared as he began to realize – incredible as it might seem – impossible as it might seem – yet every passing moment making the impossible dream seem more and more probable – every moment of silence making it seem all the more likely in fact that – yes – he had in fact – he had done it – was doing it – he had pulled off the impossible – he, Jonathan Crane, had scared the living piss out of the—

"More cowbell," Joker said at last.

Scarecrow blinked.

"HAHAHAHAHAAAAA! I get it now, the Reaper. You need more cowbell, Craney. HAHAHAHA. More—HAHAHAHA—Cowbell."

Scarecrow swallowed.

"That's what's been missing, Johnny-o. That's what you're doing wrong. HAHHAHAHAAA! You're doing a disservice to yourself and this whole band—er, yeah, this whole band—you got to get more cowbell."

Scarecrow did not get the reference.

"So try it again and really, y'know, explore the space."

After Ra's al Ghul and Vandal Savage, he was probably the least attuned to popular culture.

_"Más cencerro, mi amigo."_

At least, pop culture outside of horror films.

_"Plus de sonnaille. Mehr Kuhglocke. Mais sino da vaca. Meer koeklok."_

And since he didn't get the reference in English, he certainly didn't get it in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Dutch.

"_Latlh cow-jah."_

Or Klingon.

* * *

Bruce reached out to touch Selina's hand, signaling that she shouldn't click past this screen yet. He read the document a second time. Of all the articles, documents and video that had been tagged by Selina's search routines, this was by far the most interesting. An internal memo at the CIA proposed an investigation and debriefing of bestselling fiction writer Dan Brown.

"It looks like he put some thermal imaging equipment into the hands of the fictional special ops agents in his book, equipment which the real CIA actually does have. They want to know if he got lucky making it up, or if he really knows something."

"Yeah, I saw that," Selina said, her fingers still poised on the next arrow. "I guess you _would_ like that one, for the same reason I don't. Night lenses and heat sensors that can spot the warmth of a body in a darkened room, big whoop, I've been getting around that kind of thing since the Phoenix 9000 was a 6000. But this 'differential sensitivity and multi-source integration' – if I'm reading that right, you can essentially look _back in time_. So you're not seeing where the cat burglar is right now—that's not going to do you any good because I left ten minutes ago—but you can actually see _where I was_. Where I moved. Do you realize what that means? I've got to get a set of Victor's frigid-field generators now for my boots! Like my feet don't get cold enough this time of year. Not like my costume is insulated. That's why I always take the extra time to disarm the heat cameras instead of wearing those awful cold suits. Now they've got thermal lenses that look back in time, and I have to start toting around frost cores in my boot heels."

Bruce couldn't suppress a chuckle.

"Selina, you don't _have_ to do any of that anymore. You're on the other end of the lenses now, remember?"

"…"

"Kitten?"

"I prefer not to think of it that way," she said simply.

* * *

Joker was disgusted at the Scarecrow's ineptitude. Clearly he needed more cowbell. Since there was no cowbell at the new hacienda—an oversight for which someone would have to pay dearly—Joker just hit him with the scythe for a while, then kicked him out onto the street. A short while later, Harley let the hyenas out to play with him and cheer him up, but he had gone.

Another day in another mood, Joker would have forgotten the episode completely in an hour or two, but today, for some reason, he kept finding little bits of straw as he wandered around the Ha-hacienda. Each new find served as a reminder: Scarecrow.

"A man so lacking in the fundamentals, he didn't even bring a chicken to an Arkham escape. What's the world coming to, Harls?"

"Cheer up, Puddin'. Have another Ho Ho."

"Nah," Joker pouted. "Well, maybe just one. I couldn't reach him, Harley. These are the ones that haunt you. He had such potential. If only—heh, heh-heh, HA!"

"Ooh, that sounds like a good one, Mistah J. Ya got an idea?"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAAA-Right! Why was the Scarecrow not able to achieve his goals?"

"Not enough cowbell," Harley declared loyally.

"WRONG! Because he's not me—HAHAHAHAAAAA! Why didn't I think of it before? I can do this fear thing much better than scrawny old friend of Dorothy. Pack up the whoopee cushions, Harley, we're going to try something new. HA-HA. HA-HA-HA. Oh, HA-HA HA-HA HA-HA HAAAAAA! This is going to drive Batsy bonkers! HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAA!"

* * *

There was silence in the cave, apart from the bat Walapang warning the other bats off his favorite stalactite, a soft shuffling from the worktable where Bruce was testing lenses, and a few frustrated grunts from the gymnasium where Selina was testing out a new harness. The discussion of the new heat view technologies had escalated into a bet: Batman was going to build a set as a crimefighting tool, Catwoman was going to plan a heist to defeat it. If she pulled it off, he would fly her to Cairo in Wayne One to see the new ruins of the Alexandrian Temple of Bastet. If she didn't, she would donate a sum to the Wayne Foundation to underwrite security improvements at the Gotham Museum of Art.

Not a bet she intended to lose. She had already called Victor for some basic information about the size, weight, consistency, and placement of the devices she would need. She had made up "rehearsal props", basically, filling rubber balloons with flour or gelatin and affixing them to her boots, hips, and gloves at key points. After a little practice on the uneven bars, she would have a better sense how they moved and how their weight affected her moves. Then she would be able to describe her requirements to Kittlemeier and—

"Catwoman!" the deep gravel pulled her from her reverie as she adjusted her balance on the bar.

"No peeking!" she called without dismounting. "We had an…" She trailed off when she saw his posture standing between the outcroppings that acted as the doorway to the gymnasium. Words weren't necessary, she could sense it. Bruce was gone, there was only Batman, weighed down with a heavy burden. "Game over. Something's happened," she said, sliding down from the bars without any of her usual flourish, and walking up to him without any slink or sway in her hips.

He nodded.

"An alert just came in. Arkham escape. It's Joker."

* * *

To be continued…


	3. Gallows Humor

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 3: Gallows Humor

* * *

There are dozens of fashion institutes, tech schools, and community colleges in Gotham, but only four true universities boasting the full offerings of a diverse and bustling college campus. The 9 o'clock classes at the Wayne Forum at Hudson, for example, might include _Reaction Kinetics and Reactor Design_ in Lecture Hall 1, _Medieval French Poetry_ in Hall 2, and _Consumer Behavior in the Global Marketplace_ in Hall 3. Each campus has its greeks, its exchange students, its marketing associations and its chess clubs. Each has its protests condemning animal cruelty, social inequality, the use of the passive voice in museum labels to obscure imperialist crimes against Native Americans, and of course, the blot on civilization that is Columbus Day. Every student group on every campus has at least one fundraising effort a year, usually two, as there is a limit to how many bake sales and car washes the market will bear. Students have to be creative, with the result that a haunted house outside of October isn't that remarkable. Even on the Hudson University campus, even if Scarecrow is free. What's the Monty Python Society supposed to do when the Tri Delts already had a fashion show, the Photography Club had a chocolate tasting, the Amateur Radio Club had a life-size Monopoly game, and the Bigfoot Society had a 10K run?

Nobody thought anything was unusual when the fliers showed up picturing a cross-eyed John Cleese with horns and a pitchfork drawn in magic marker and a few Casper-like ghosts circling over his head like twittering birds after an animated coyote is hit in the head in a Warner Brothers' cartoon. It all seemed perfectly normal. It all seemed exactly what you would expect from a Monty Python Society fundraiser.

Eric Pike thought it would make a decent outing with Sam and her friends. Much cheaper than a movie, and then afterwards, they could split off while the rest of the gang went to McDonald's. Get some quiet time together now that she'd finally dumped the high school boyfriend. Samantha was intriguing, but those girls from her dorm floor still traveled in a pack. Eric had wandered his own dorm looking for some extra guys to round out the group. He found two of the new freshmen in the laundry room: Drake and Randy Quad. Drake passed. but Quad said he'd go and he'd ask his roommate. That would've made three guys and five girls including Sam. Better than nothing, Eric figured, but then two of Sam's friends decided to pass when they found out where the group was going. So it worked out perfect: three and three.

It was a bit of a hike finding the place. Out past Rec Hall, across the infamous Parking Lot 12 (nicknamed "The Tundra" by students who had to cross it on icy winter mornings on their way to the old computer lab), then down Bigler Avenue so they were technically off the Hudson Campus in the Gotham suburb of Harlow. They came to a very ordinary looking house, and Eric pulled the flier from his pocket and double-checked the address. Yep, this was it: 1313 Brodbank. The name of the street was real, but the house number had obviously been altered for the occasion.

"Here we go," Eric announced, ringing the doorbell.

No one answered, but after a few seconds, the door did open by itself—but without any of the old-wood creaking you would expect under the circumstances. Randy was the first to say it:

"Just like that? We just go inside? No place to pay admission?"

That set off Amy, the tomboy know-it-all who fancied herself an expert on everything. She declared that it was illegal to charge admission without a special license, and that would require inspections from the fire marshal and paying a fee. What "they" were undoubtedly doing to get around those rules was to have a table at the end to take donations. Amy was apparently ready to elaborate on the subject further, presumably until some ghost, zombie, or chainsaw-wielding maniac appeared to shut her up, so inside they went, hoping such a maniac would appear and appear quickly.

"This is a nice house," Sam said, looking around as they entered.

"Looks pretty ordinary to me," Eric noted.

"Yeah, looks like my Sims' living room," Stacy said, pointing. "I know they've got that couch."

Once again, it set off Amy. Designs for items like furniture were protected intellectual property and 3-D gaming environments did not have the right to copy anything they wanted. Why, if that sim game copied that sofa from, like, a picture in a Rooms-to-Go catalog, that game-maker could be sued…

Eric stormed off to another room. Freshmen! If tonight didn't go somewhere with Sam, if he wasn't in a position to start taking her on dates, one-on-one, without these stupid twits from her dorm floor tagging along, he was done.

"Hm, dining room," he noted, looking around the room in which he found himself. It too looked incredibly ordinary.

"What's in here?" Randy said, following down the hallway Eric had come from.

"Dining room," Eric said.

"Lame," Randy said. "I don't get it. Haunted house, right? So where are the ghosts?"

A high-backed chair at the head of the table swiveled, revealing a… a very pale, grinning gentleman in a frock coat.

"I'm so glad you asked. HAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!"

* * *

When an escape is discovered in the high security wing of Arkham Asylum, an immediate Code 4 Lockdown goes into effect—unless the escapee is The Joker, in which case, it's a Code 5. The lockdown was still in effect when Batman reached the front gate, which meant he could enter and move through the halls without half of the Rogues Gallery seeing him. It meant he could converse with Dr. Bartholomew and other staffers without the usual disruptions from the nearby cells.

He inspected Joker's cell first – that was his primary reason in coming. He examined what was known of the Joker's escape route, naturally, all the existing footage from the key surveillance cameras before they were deactivated, and the personnel records of the three missing employees. But this was simply for completion. Batman's goal was not to reconstruct the details of the escape but to get some hint what the mad man might be thinking. If there was any indication that Joker had been thinking about dragons, airplanes, or rock and roll in the days and weeks before escaping, it could give Batman a clue where he was planning to strike. When Joker was involved, clues like that saved lives.

Unfortunately, all the cell's contents revealed was the improvised nature of the escape. Joker had left a bucket balanced over the door, which had drenched an orderly in Liquid Plummer when he opened it.

"Not Joker's style," Batman murmured, inspecting the empty bottle from Arkham's own supply closet found in the trash. Normally, Joker planned ahead. He would have some dupe smuggle in battery acid for this little trick. Batman did not like it when someone like Joker varied from their normal habits.

Usually he didn't like it. In this case there was one other feature of the escape that deviated from Joker's usual pattern: the body count. There were three Arkham employees who had to be prevented from doing their jobs for Joker to have pulled off this particular getaway: Kevin Boda, Rosa Crites, and Gavin Worsted. Normally, their bodies would have been found by now. Normally, a parting message would have been scrawled on the walls in their blood. But this time, they were just missing. Stranger still, Worsted had never clocked in for the day. If there hadn't been a Joker escape, he'd have a reprimand by now, for it certainly looked like he just skipped work without calling in. With the Joker escape, his No Call/No Show was cause for celebration. Was it possible that he and the others were missing because they were still alive? Could it be that they'd found no bodies because there were no bodies to find?

Apart from the anomalies of the escape, however, the trip to Arkham was disappointing. Batman felt he had no real clues what Joker might be up to, and he'd lost nearly an hour while the mad clown was up to who knows what.

* * *

"Oh man," Eric grimaced, staring at globs of a wet, tarry substance coating the walls. On the stone walls, it looked like tar. On the metal table he was strapped to, it looked like liquid rust.

This was hardcore. This was a dungeon out of a Karloff movie, right down to the slimy stone walls. What had become of the others, Eric couldn't guess. The only sound was this faint click-click-click. Not quite a clock. Not quite a metronome. Whatever the hell it was, it couldn't possibly be good. Not when… "Oh man."

Eric closed his eyes tight. He had just managed to forget he'd seen the Joker—the actual, green hair, white face, shit-eating grin, honest-to-god Joker— right before whatever happened in the haunted house, right before he woke up here. He'd managed to focus on the dungeon he was in, the black muck on the walls… cheery stuff like that. Strapped to a table in a dungeon out of Edgar Allen Poe, that was the good news.

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT TICKING SOUND ANYWAY?

Strapped to a Frankenstein table in a Vincent Price dungeon while some _Pit and the Pendulum_ thing clicked up or down to slowly, imperceptibly sink him into something horrible, or else to slowly and imperceptibly lower some horrible thing down on top of him. Or maybe if the horrible thing was up above, he was being lifted up to it. Or, possibly, none of that was right, and the clicking-ticking thing was just counting down the time until he'd be transferred to some other medieval torture device and slowly pulled, one limb at a time, into pieces. Or maybe crushed. Eric's Colonial History 210 was just reading about the Salem witch trials. He remembered how the colonies didn't have all the gruesome gadgets their predecessors did during the Inquisition, so they'd torture somebody by stacking weight on top of them. That'd be a pretty gruesome way to go.

Eric knew his imagination was only scratching the surface. Hot branding irons on the soles of the feet, electrodes on the genitals, there was no end to the possibilities in a dungeon like this with all that slimy crud on the walls.

And all of that was the good news. The bad news was that green hair and white face he was trying not to think about. The bad news wasn't the dungeon. The bad news wasn't what might happen in the dungeon. The bad news was _it was the Joker who had put him here_.

* * *

Date Night might be cancelled, but Catwoman saw no reason she couldn't nose around a little. There was no telling what sort of information a curious cat might dig up. She questioned a few nobodies on her way to the Iceberg, but that was about as productive as questioning street scum always was for her. She learned nothing that she wouldn't have to confirm from more reliable, non-scum sources, and she felt she had tarnished the good name of cats. Dealing with gutter trash was such a Gotham Postish activity, she needed to restore herself with some supremely civilized act – which is why she did it on the way to the Iceberg. It didn't get much more civilized than a very dry vodka martini with a twist of pickled ginger the way only Sly could make them. Meow.

It looked like a quiet night at the 'Berg. Clayface was at the bar talking to Sly. The bartender had his phone out and was showing Matt a video of something that barked. Selina couldn't see the screen, of course, but judging by the few words overheard while she picked up her drink, she deduced that Sly got caught up in some Adoption Day street party held by the Wayne Animal Shelter. He came home "with a furry friend" as the posters say, and the video was one of several featuring his yapping new friend doing his special trick. She gave bartender and clay man a wide berth and scanned the room for a more suitable informant.

Hugo Strange. Ick. No…

Crazy Quilt. Hardly…

A-ha! Mad Hatter, sipping tea from a souvenir Igloo glass, pinkie extended in his prissiest I-have-gossip-to-share pose.

"Evening, Jervis," she said with a twinkle. "What was that greeting you always had for the Cheshire Cat?"

"'It's a Cheshire cat,' said the Duchess."

Selina laughed and took the seat next to him.

"I don't think that was it, but close enough," she smiled. "Any news?"

Normally, that was all the prompting Jervis Tetch needed, but tonight, his attention wandered at exactly the wrong moment. "Does the new Peahen look superliciously like an Alice?"

Catwoman glanced at Oswald's new waitress.

"Not from where I'm sitting."

"Really? She seems positively Alicious to me."

"She has straight blonde hair. Is that really all it takes, Jervis? Because a wig will do that much."

"I suppose," he said sadly.

"Any news?" Selina tried again, picking up a menu and glancing at the appetizers to make the query seem all the more casual.

"Not a new," Jervis replied with a heartbroken shake of his head. "Oh, other than Roxy getting cozy with one of those Two-Face henchmen Harv brought in from Star City," he said, perking up considerably now that he had thought of something. "And um, Oswald caught Magpie holding out on him after the Darlington job, so she's on the black list for the duration. Cluemaster nearly hired a henchwench who wasn't a wench at all but a drag queen from Club Nero… Double Dare stole some sort of golden orchid from one of the triad elders and had to go running to King Snake for protection. He hadn't forgiven them for stealing his tarts way back when, and he's making them work for him now in exchange for his smoothing things over with the triads… Signal Man lost $30,000 playing blackjack at a Bludhaven casino over the weekend. Oh, and Hugo has a frabjous Batman cowl spattered with barbecue sauce that he's trying to pass off as the real thing stained with blood. What else, what else… Nobody seems to know where the Z have got to. Noah Cutler was apparently making some inquiries, but nobody can find them. It's like they've all disappeared. Maxie Zeus had a three-way with his ex-Aphrodite and a Rainbow Raider from Keystone. He has yet to discover his lair is missing several valuable artifacts since that encounter."

"Interesting," Selina said. "But back to the Z…"

"Well apparently, these Rainbow Raiders are quite—ker-snick, ker-snack, Kitty the Cat, you want to know about the Z? Everyone else wants to know how I know Maxie was robbed before Maxie knows himself, and it is a tale fit for a Jabberwock. You see, the former Aphrodite is also a former Alice who goes to the same gym as a former—"

"The Z, Jervis. Any idea where they were seen last? Or who they might have been working for before they disappeared?"

"I don't know anything for certain, Cheshire Cat. For to know, you have to be in the know, and once you're in the know, it can be very hard getting out again. For there are forget-me-notes and forget-me-knots in a vase on the table as you leave, and if you take the one instead of the other for your buttonhole, it makes such a tangle. So all I could do is speculate."

"Do," Selina said, taking a sip of her martini as if it all made perfect sense.

Rather than answer, Jervis looked fixedly at her left index-claw and said it looked awfully sharp.

Selina sighed. That was the problem getting information with Jervis. You did have to sit through an awful lot of nonsense.

* * *

Samantha tried very hard to focus on her breathing. In and out, in and out, in and out. Pay absolutely no attention to the—oh god, oh god, oh god, don't look down, don't look down, don't look down—Pay absolutely no attention to the warm fuzzy thing crawling over… foot. Oh god, oh god, oh god, it was crawling on her foot.

Keep breathing, don't look down. Keep breathing, don't look down. Keep breathing, don't – **EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!**

Oh god.

Oh god.

Oh god.

A trickle of urine was dripping down her leg now, a sensation that penetrated Samantha's paralyzed mind for one reason and one reason only: how would the tarantula react if she dripped on it?

* * *

Selina's head was reeling when she left the Iceberg. It wasn't the martini, she hadn't swallowed more than a sip of that. It was the undertow of talking to Jervis for nearly than an hour, then being spirited off to Oswald's office and hit with a proposition like the Muziri Tigers. When she finally did unearth that final bit of information about the Z (even if it was a guess), her head was spinning too wildly to think through the possibilities.

The Z were simply not interesting enough to hold Jervis's attention. Every time she thought she had led him back to the subject, his attention flickered: _Oh look, Hugo is showing off his fake Batman cowl again, and even if it is Hugo, and even if it is barbecue sauce instead of blood, isn't that the best-looking Bat-fake you ever saw? It's the sheen that makes the difference, don't you know. Graphite do you think? Or something like that gypsum stuff that blackboards are made of, sprayed with Teflon or something to give it a little gloss? Oh, or maybe oil is applied, that would make it shine too, like the Queen of Hearts own crown, don't you know. Say what you will about the wretched Bat, he does have an eye for quality headgear… _

It was a relief when the new Peahen came by with a note from Oswald, asking to see Catwoman "when convenient." Selina decided it didn't get much more convenient than the moment Jervis Tetch started speculating if Hugo might use shoe polish or Vaseline to give his fake Batman-cowl "a nice Queen of Hearts crown shine."

* * *

It wasn't the first time Stacy had blacked out. Not the first time she'd woken up somewhere strange, feeling like shit, with some serious holes in her memory about how she got there. Unfortunately, there was no smell of stale beer and vomit this time. The air had a cold, clammy feeling, and the last thing she remembered… was not a keg party.

She sat up, looking around the… uh, _room_, I guess you'd call it. It looked kind of like a dorm room, if your dorm had damp cinderblock walls and no window. There was a nice bed, a book shelf and posters on the walls: Whit Morsing, one of the Hudson football players, and another one with the whole team and cheerleaders. That one was thumb-tacked to the back of the door… More thumbtacks in a bulletin board over the desk. On the desk, a couple text books and one of those lamps from the student bookstore... Definitely more of a dorm room than a prison cell, but seeing that Stacy was pretty sure she was a prisoner, she had to think that door was locked. She tried it anyway…

And found it opened… Except it didn't open into a hallway. That really would be too much to hope for. It opened to a smaller room that she would have called a closet except for its contents. There was a curtained shower stall and a little table with a shower cap, a bar of soap, a miniature bottle of shampoo and a folded bath towel, all sitting next to a small paper card reading:

**_Please enjoy these fine toiletries provided for your convenience. Enjoy your stay.  
–The Management, Bates Motel._**

* * *

As always, Catwoman had to sit through several minutes of Penguin puffery before he got down to business. Oswald was never quite so happy as when he had a scheme to a) make money and b) work with an old school Rogue whom he deemed "on his level—kwak!" Happiness in Oswald Cobblepot tended to manifest in litanies of alliterative prose, in this case celebrating the supreme suitability of the proposed partnership. Oswald concluded his preamble by leaning back in his chair with a fat, contented gesture, and stretching out his hand like the statue of an old world saint posed high on the façade of a grand cathedral, conferring his blessings on a devout populace below:

"I have said before, my felicitous feline, you and I are the aristocrats of crime. It's only right that we give our peers first refusal when opportunities present themselves—kwak!. Give our custom to lesser mortals only after our equals have declined the honor. Don't you agree?"

"I know Magpie stiffed you, Ozzy. You went to her first because she's cheap. And now that it's blown up in your face, you're coming to me."

Catwoman smiled sweetly, and Oswald chewed his cigarette holder, looking put out. After a long, sour moment, he conceded the point:

"Kwak."

* * *

Randy stared at the cold, recessed eyes of the vintage jack-in-the-box that shared his cell. The jack-in-the-box stared back. It grinned too, but Randy did not feel like returning the grin.

He thought Joker looked creepy, but even Joker – even Joker _in the flesh_ and not in the newspaper – even Joker's smile wasn't as heart-pounding flesh-crawling I-want-my-mommy creepy as that jack-in-the-box. Maybe it was being alive. Joker was a deranged lunatic, a homicidal maniac, but at least he was a person. He was an evil person who was probably going to kill you, but even so, he had a mouth. So… so scary as his smile was, it wasn't all that unnatural for it to be there made up of lips and teeth. Joker moved, he laughed, he did all the things that living people do, whereas this jack-in-the-box just _sat there._

Randy thought it was bad when it was a closed box sitting there. You wake up chained to a wall, the weight of your body falling on your arms while you're unconscious, so they feel like they're ready to drop out of their sockets if you ever get free—that's bad. And there's this closed box sitting there that's probably a bomb or something, it's really, really bad. That's what Randy had thought—until it started making noise. That creepy kiddie music, really soft and slow. Randy realized that chained to a wall with a closed box is one thing, chained to a wall with a closed box that has music coming out of it is infinitely worse.

Until the music stops—until the music stops and absolutely nothing happens—then you realize that okay, this is it, all that stuff before that you thought was creepy, that was nothing. This, right here, right now, THIS is as bad as it could possibly be. This is it, this is as bad as it gets. This is rock (gulp) bottom.

Until the top of the box bursts open and that head pops up, scaring the living shit out of you.

Ah, the good old days, Randy thought. Such happier times. With that creepy clown head bobbing up and down on its spring. Randy thought he was creeped out then, but he realized now that was nothing.

This was the scary part.

Its spring had run out of springiness. Bobbly Sinister Jack-in-the-Box Head was now an _Eerily Still_ Sinister Jack-in-the-Box Head.

Randy stared at its cold, recessed eyes…

And it stared back…

It grinned at him with a frozen smile of eternal mirth…

Smiled at a joke Randy did not know…

And Randy did not feel like returning its grin.

* * *

It was the kind of job Catwoman was offered once a year when she was working: Sir Edward Montrose got screwed with his pants on when all the screwing he'd been doing the regular way overturned his prenup. He'd lost the bulk of his fortune in the divorce, leaving him with the upkeep on a 40-room ancestral home he could no longer afford – as well as a magnificent art collection he was forbidden to sell under the terms of his great, great grandfather's will. The family trustees had blocked every attempt to get around the no sale clause, so the only way for Sir Edward to liquidate any of his holdings was if an item was stolen. Then he could collect the insurance while his buyer paid off the thief. He was therefore prepared to lend several pieces to a Gotham museum if he could be assured they would not be coming back. He would even provide the would-be thief (or her agent, in this case Oswald) with the names of certain collectors who had expressed an interest in them over the years.

"The Muziri Tigers," Oswald said. "Twelve statues, wedding present for some maharajah. Half are solid gold encrusted with rubies; the other half are silver set with lapis lazuli. All about yea high," he added, pointing the tip of his umbrella several inches over his desktop.

Catwoman arched an eyebrow.

"You better not be including the height of the desk, Ozzy, because I'd need a squad of henchmen and a couple moving vans."

"Eight inches," he quacked.

"I'll think about it."

Oswald settled a little more comfortably into his chair, stroking the handle of his umbrella like Blofeld petting his cat. Selina let him enjoy the moment, let him start spending the proceeds from the stolen tigers before she continued:

"Of course, a job like this is apt to attract some Bat attention. I should have something prepared. A new lair, purr-haps with a trapdoor and something nasty set up in the basement. Something to teach our favorite hero that what Kitty takes, Kitty keeps. Nosy capes who try to take it back make the acquaintance of bigger tigers than that."

"As I said, Catwoman, you are truly a fellow aristocrat of crime."

"Yes, well, deathtraps like that don't build themselves. Get a message to the Z for me?"

"Kwak! Problem. They dropped out of sight a few days ago."

"Don't tell me somebody finally went after them for padding the bill with all those flat screen TVs and helicopter tours of Gotham harbor."

"No, nothing like that. If they didn't go into hiding after KGBeast and the Vespas, I can't imagine what would drive them to it. Kwak, kwak-kwak-kwak. I'm fairly certain this is a case of 'once bit' prudence. Remember when they worked for the Scarecrow last time? He doesn't trust freelancers. Opted for his usual henchman insurance."

"Injecting them with a special fear toxin that will only kick in in the heat of a Bat interrogation."

"Precisely—kwak. Crow lost a lair recently, after that armored car business. If he hired the Z to replace it, a sensible bird would fly the nest as soon as the job was completed."

"Get out of Gotham until the toxin wore off, so there'd no chance of Batman catching them and setting it off like last time. I guess that's possible."

* * *

Amy had screamed herself hoarse in the first fifteen minutes. She'd torn her fingernails down to the quick clawing and scratching at the coffin lid. All she could do now was whimper.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She couldn't believe she was going to DIE being so stupid.

Here she was, buried alive, and she'd wasted all that air screaming. Then she wasted more air clawing at the lid. She was supposed to be better than this. She was supposed to realize at once what was happening. She was supposed to remain calm and save her strength, start meditating and slow her breathing. Astonish her rescuers when they came with having the presence of mind to conserve her precious oxygen.

NOW SHE WAS GOING TO DIE JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!!!!!

* * *

After the Iceberg, Catwoman hit the rooftops. She was pissed at the wasted evening.

Not that she'd expected to learn that Harley Quinn set up a Twitter account and was tweeting Joker's plans and location to anybody who would listen. She just… she expected _something_ more from that trip to the Iceberg. A half-tempting proposition about tigers and a half-plausible theory about a possibly irrelevant rumor about the Z. No wonder crimefighting wasn't her—

The thought was cut off by a shaft of light throwing a dark symbol onto the clouds: an emblem of the one facet of crimefighting that was very much her kink.

"Well, it is supposed to be Date Night," Selina purred.

She'd intended to call Batman on the OraCom and tell him her one bit of news about the Z laying low. Now she could surprise him in person. She headed for Chatham, the rooftop and gargoyle that offered the best view of the One-PP roof, but as soon as she got there…

"What the hell?"

Catwoman twitched her head as if trying to knock water from her ear. Then she looked towards the Batsignal again.

_"What the hell?"_

Bach's Toccata and Fugue, the most recognizable piece of organ music in the annals of classical composition—as well as the preferred horror soundtrack from the era of silent movie Draculas, dark castles, and opera house phantoms. Something you expect to hear if you're attending a Lon Chaney retrospective or a midnight screening of The Golem. Not something you expect to hear coming out of the Batsignal.

Catwoman unfurled her whip and swung in to take a closer look. If anyone was watching, well, she had used the signal to get Batman's attention back in the day. It wasn't unheard of for her to be there. And if Catwoman _did_ come by to use the Batsignal for some purpose of her own and heard it playing organ music, she would certainly take a closer look.

_..:: STAY BACK!::.._ she heard crackling over the OraCom a moment before Batman's bulk swung into her, pulling her off course. His trajectory carried them farther than she intended, and they landed together in the northernmost corner of the rooftop. He held the embrace he'd begun mid-swing, as if shielding her from an explosion with his body.

Seconds passed…

The embrace was nice, and normally Selina wouldn't be the one to break the moment. But since Scarecrow was involved, she figured she better make sure he wasn't shielding her from some explosion, fireball or monster that wasn't really there:

"Are we being extra-careful," she whispered, "or do you see a raging inferno that I don't?"

"Careful," he graveled. "There's an object under the lamp producing the music. Looks like an ordinary boom box, judging by the infrared, but I won't know for sure until I can perform a more thorough visual inspection and then, ideally, take it apart. There's a _second_ object in front of the base. I haven't determined its function yet, or if it's connected to the boom box. It could be rigged to explode or release SmileX if the music is stopped, or if a body steps too close to the—"

"SmileX? Not fear toxin? C'mon, Stud, that thing's playing Toccata and Fugue not circus music."

Batman scowled.

"The second object, whatever it is, it's balanced on a pair of clown shoes."

* * *

Chuck was doing his best not to have an all out panic attack after the snakes. He knew he'd fainted, and he was pretty sure he was in the same room he was in before. Except now, the snakes were gone. Should be good news, right?

Then he heard the footsteps. That should be good news too. Footsteps meant feet, not snakes. Long as it wasn't more hissing or slithering, footsteps should be—

"Ha-ha-squeak-hee-hee-hee."

Hissing wasn't so bad. Hissing meant snakes. But that was laughter, and that meant—

"Hiya there, prisoner guy. Time to get dressed for school!"

Harley Quinn.

"I got you a notebook and a plastic ruler…"

Joker.

"…gluestick."

Harley Quinn, the Joker's girlfriend, was standing in front of him in a cap and gown, with little tassels sewn onto the cap!

"And ooh, lookee here, a nice sharp number 2 pencil."

* * *

Two cowls were silhouetted in front of the Batsignal as Batman and Catwoman's heads tilted at the same angle, looking down on an ordinary cigar box balanced on a pair of clown shoes.

"What now, X-ray it?" Catwoman asked gingerly.

Batman had performed every test he could without touching the box or the shoes, and he'd determined that there was no explosive, corrosive, or contaminant to be triggered, exposed or released if the items were moved.

"Negative. No wrapping. Easy to open. Easy to see it can be moved without risk. The logical thing is to X-ray it, which means the radiation of the X-ray could be the very thing that springs the trap."

"So… just open it?"

Grimly, Batman handed her a rebreather and said "Yes."

* * *

Harley escorted the last of the students to Room 101 of Buster Keaton Hall, put away the cattle prod she used to get everyone seated according to Mistah J's seating plan, and fished out a nice shiny apple which she sat on his lectern.

Seeing that he was late, she did what any good teaching assistant would do. She wrote his name on the blackboard:

Professah J

And then, since that was done, she gave a short talk on how to squeak the chalk to make a nice, loud one that gets your ears shuddering.

* * *

No one _understands_ how Joker's mind works, not completely, but Batman did have a rudimentary grasp of the lunatic's thought process, based on past experience. So did Catwoman. Their experiences were very different: his from battling the insane clown, hers from Joker drawing her name for a Secret Santa. Despite these differences, there were surprising areas of overlap. Looking down into the cigar box, both could conceive of only one possible meaning for its contents.

"Is this what I think it is?" Catwoman said sourly.

Though both wore gloves, hers had the advantage of claws, allowing her to pick up the object with the less physical contact than Batman could achieve with his fingers, and more control than he would have using tweezers. She held up the "keychain", delicately suspended from her right index claw and thumb, permitting the fob to dangle in such a way that the visual pun was complete.

An ordinary car key on an ordinary keychain – except that the "chain" connecting key to fob was a thin length of coiled rope with a noose on one end, and the key fob was a miniature Batman figure with the noose tied around its neck.

"Only way it makes sense to me is if this is the key to a Hummer," she said, and Batman's scowl deepened, knowing they shared the same thought. To Joker's mind, there could be only possible meaning, and Batman and Catwoman spoke the words together:

"Gallows Hummer."

* * *

"HAHAHAHA! Bringing us—Q.E.D.—to the proof of our theorem, E = MC Hammer driving the nail into the square peg. No wait, the square peg into the round nail… Never mind. The point is, students, that our esteemed colleague Professor Jonathan Crane is a dipshit, HAHAHAHAHA! Why is he a dipshit, you may ask? Because he has dedicated his career to this one concept of fear, overlooking the obvious fallacy that fear isn't funny. SLIDE!

In the back of the room, Harley squeaked, jumped to her feet, and dimmed the lights. Then she ran back to the slide projector and hit the button on the side, producing a loud whoopee cushion noise as the carousel advanced and a timeline appeared on the projection screen in the front of the room. The illustration showed a caveman on the far left, over a length of the timeline labeled 200,000 B.C. To the right of this was a pottery bowl, a pyramid, an image of the Mona Lisa, and finally on the extreme right, a pair of Groucho Marx glasses and moustache.

Joker—in his academic gown of regal purple, topped with a cap of vivid green—picked up a pointer and, after poking Chuck a few times with the tip, pivoted to the screen to point to this image.

"Humor is highly evolved," he declared. "Whereas fear…" He pointed again, first poking Chuck a few more times in the chest, then pointing back at the projection screen "…is at the other end of the spectrum. An animal instinct, what we in academic circles like to call _'E Pluribus Soiledus our Trousers-us. Maximus Caca. Melita, domi adsum.'_ So the key word is unevolved, the neanderthals among us who don't really belong in the human race. I won't name names, we all know who they are and we all know they're eating up all the bananas. Question then: HOW can we find the JOKE in FEAR? SLIDE!

Once again, the whoopee cushion sound effect was heard as the slide carousel advanced, revealing the same caveman from the timeline, blown up to fill the screen.

"Fear is where this knuckle-dragger lives, and as anyone can see, he's only six hairs away from being a baboon. Where's the funny, I ask you? Inventing fire AFTER you've eaten the pig?"

* * *

The fight was predictable:

It was not "date night" and it was not "mumble years ago" when they wound up working together if they happened upon a case independently and discovered each other's involvement halfway through. They were together now, they woke up in the same bed each morning, it was not necessary to invent reasons to spend time together. This was _JOKER_. He was _DANGEROUS_. And as far as Batman was concerned, Catwoman's role in the case was over.

Catwoman naturally saw it differently. She hadn't _ set out_ to investigate Joker, but she did happen to be there when the key clue was found. She wasn't going to tuck in her tail and go home just because things took a dangerous turn. Batman would still be on the roof of One Police Plaza if she hadn't noticed the parking stub tucked into the Bat figure's utility belt. It was only thanks to her keen eye that Batman found the Hummer the key opened!

This assertion led to the Glare of Death that sent criminals and colleagues alike into hasty retreat—all except Catwoman, who merely glared back.

Yes, fine, Batman would have found the parking stub _ eventually_, but not until he got the whole cigar box-clown shoes-boom box contraption back to the cave and took everything apart with tweezers. He had it hours sooner than expected because of her. And for that, he thought he was going to send her home?!

"This is not a state of mind," Batman graveled. "This is not something I 'think' I'm going to do or you're going to do. This is what is _going to happen_: **_You are going home now._**"

* * *

"Then there's the whole 'Coward dies many times before his death, thing," Joker said, pounding on the lectern. "Something is wrong there. If you die many times, you're not doing it right. And I personally would like to see some solid research on these fraidy cats who _cannot die properly_. Dr. Quinn, call the Institute. See about getting us a grant. HAHAHAHA!"

* * *

It had been a long time.

Years of being Batman had produced a hybrid of keen intellect and razor sharp instinct that made decisions instantly, acted with certainty and without hesitation. It had been a long time since his feelings formed this blockage. There was the gut level instinct, the core understanding of _what had to be done_, and there was… there was _the act of doing it_. Normally, the one flowed into the other automatically, it flowed like water. It simply was, a reflex, a muscle memory. The only exception was when he encountered a certain cat burglar who put the man at odds with the Bat. What the crimefighter knew had to be done was… was somehow not enough to propel his mind and body into doing it. It required an act of will—an act of will he was not always capable of.

It had been a long time since he felt this.

Batman was quite aware that she hadn't gone home. He knew she wasn't going to when she left him at the Batsignal. He knew she would follow him to the 14th Street Parking Garage and he permitted it only because he knew the Hummer itself would not be the Joker encounter. Opening the vehicle now, he saw exactly what he expected: a GPS. _That's_ what would lead to the Joker encounter, and that's why the feline shadow tailing him had to be stopped here.

It had been a long time since he felt this. Like a tightness in his chest requiring the deepest of breaths to fill his lungs. An effort to breathe, an effort to move. A studied and deliberate act of will to make himself do what had to be done, to make his body move where it needed to in order to draw her eye to the alley, to lead her into the shadows, and to… to swing her into position to apply the nerve pinch. Cuffing Catwoman to the fire escape conscious would be a waste of effort. This way, he could expect a six or seven minute head start, and when she came to, it might take her a full three or four minutes to get herself free, rather than the 45 seconds she'd take normally.

* * *

"When corn got to $2 a bushel, I sold. HAHAHAaaaa—Anybody? No? Abe Feldspar? Just put it on my bill? The other one is in a snow tire in Cleveland? Well anyway, the joke with fear is: _you do it to yourself,_ HAHAHAHA! The tarantula in your head is a thousand times worse than the one in the tank with you. The real one isn't poisonous. The real one isn't biting you. The one in your head, THAT'S the one that's gonna kill ya. Get it?

"Let's have a look at your lab work: chained to a wall over a tank of snakes, chained to a wall over a tank of furry spiders, chained to a wall with a jack-in-the-box. You two stopped screaming soon as we took you out. That guy's still shaking like a leaf. Now, who had the Chinese water torture?"

Batman had entered silently and observed the scene from a duct above the ceiling tiles. Joker was too engrossed in his performance to notice a square of acoustic tiling moving over his head, which gave Batman ample time to count the hostages and determine why they were so well behaved. He could see that they were not chained to their desks, nor did there appear to be any pressure plates on their chairs. That eliminated the "rise from your seat, receive an electric shock" possibility. A cross-spectrum sweep of the room confirmed there were no explosives that could be detonated…

"Reviewing: Fear isn't funny. This is because fear is the currency of lower life forms. Laughter is evolved, other end of the spectrum. Hence the existence of gallows humor: Use funny as garlic to shoo away the vampire-werewolf-big bad beastie of fear. Making it very hard to find the FUNNY in FEAR. Professor Joker had eight to ten hairs turn BROWN while he was trying. But what was the ultimate solution? Mr. Freckles in the Third Row?"

Eric looked around, terrified.

"Um, tarantulas and Chinese water torture?"

"BANANAS!" Joker screamed. "Bananas, bananas, bananas!"

He pointed to the blackboard and frantically underlined words and arrows connecting his previous illustrations:

"Fear is unevolved. Caveman is unevolved. Caveman is like a monkey. Monkey eats banana. FEAR to CAVEMAN to MONKEY to BANANA. Get it? Now…"

He paused to erase the lower half of his equations, which permitted Batman to drop into position without attracting attention…

"Banana PEEL," Joker continued, writing these words below the first equation, "slip on the banana peel — Fall — 'Ah, we are all subject to gravity – just as we are all subject to DEATH'

Here, he drew a wild curved arrow connecting DEATH back to the original word FEAR…

"We're all subject to gravity, physical law, death, ACK! And that's why slapstick is FUNNY. HA-HA-HA. So you see, Class, BANANAS are the Stargate on this."

He turned back to face the class—and into a gloved fist. He staggered back, hitting the blackboard with considerable force. It's what Batman intended, but he didn't figure on the blackboard being a false wall on a turntable. The blackboard wall opened up, letting Joker fall back into a flee space. Harley Quinn stepped out of the void with what looked like a fire extinguisher, and aimed a spray of pungent banana-smelling cream into Batman's face.

It was his turn to stagger back, the banana smell triggering a convulsive hiccup that was all too familiar. He struggled to get to his feet as his mouth contorted and his lips pulled back in an involuntary grin. He struggled through hyperventilative giggles to get the antidote from his belt and into his mouth. And then he struggled to get the students to calm down until the police arrived. He could feel the stiffness around his mouth and knew the grotesque appearance that lingered after even mild SmileX exposure. He knew after the ordeal they'd suffered, his appearance wasn't helping.

He knew it wouldn't make his reconciliation with Selina any easier either.

Worst of all, he knew Joker had escaped.

He knew the worst was yet to come.

* * *

To be continued…


	4. Racecar

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 4: Racecar

* * *

Harley felt a little sticky when she and Mistah J got back to the Ha-Hacienda, so she left him to correct papers and went off to take a shower. Mistah J said it was a good class, that he'd got almost halfway through his lesson plan before the big ol' Bat party-poop came in and pooped the party. So Mistah J—Oops, that shoulda been Professah J, she kept forgetting. So _Professah_ J was in a good mood. That gave her an idea.

When she got out of the shower, Harley put the academic gown on again, but this time with nothing underneath. She left the bedroom and went to find her Puddin'.

"Oh Professor Joker," she said enticingly, as she slowly unzipped the robe halfway down her chest, "I'm _so sorry_ to interrupt your office hours, but I just _had_ to talk to you about this grade on my paper. Isn't there _some way_ we could… _raise it _a little."

Joker turned and looked at her, puzzled.

"Professor? What? Oh, the Crane thing." He waved his hand like he was distractedly swatting away a fly. "I've moved on. Check this out, Harls. RACECAR!" He stretched out his hands on the word, like a flamboyant movie director framing an imaginary hero shot.

Harley blinked.

"HA-HA HAHAHAHA!" Joker cried, punctuating the brilliant notion with the cackle it deserved (and just leave it to Harley to blink like a deer in the headlights when she should be cackling with glee).

"But, but… Puddin'," she stammered at last.

What could it mean? No absent-minded professor and the naughty teaching assistant? No toga parties?? No protesting the disenfranchised dolphins caught whaling in the Japanese tuna nets???

Harley's eyes narrowed into steely, determined slits. She marched over to Joker's desk and laid herself across the papers he had been correcting.

"School can't be out already, Professor," she drawled like a vintage Hollywood movie siren. "You were going to put the Phun back in PhD, remember? You were going to… going… to…"

She trailed off as her eye caught a few of the papers on the desk and saw the "grade" each bore in the upper right-hand corner.

"Uh, Puddin', what's with all the green question marks?"

* * *

Batman seldom used the autopilot if he was capable of driving home. The aftereffects of Smile-X exposure were not incapacitating. There was no valid safety reason to use the pilot, but he did anyway. In the short distance he'd driven, he caught sight of his reflection no less than eight times in the rearview mirror and four times in the sideview, that grotesque upward twist disfiguring his lips and coiling up his cheek. Clinically, he knew it was nothing but filaments of muscle fiber tricked into releasing calcium ions, thereby triggering contractions in specific muscles of his face. This in response to a chemical which time, sleep, and the antidote would soon flush from his system. Clinically, he knew that. Emotionally… Emotionally, he felt like a puppet on Joker's string, a chemical puppet master pulling his mouth out of shape to laugh at a joke that was not funny. Or maybe a fish. Despite Joker's involvement, a fish might be the better analogy. Its mouth is pulled out of shape too when it bites into a hook, but unlike the innocent puppet, the fish has only itself to blame. The fish takes that bite of its own free will, it makes a conscious choice. It doesn't recognize the bait for what it is and winds up…

This was ridiculous.

Batman forced the lunacy from his mind. That was the real side effect of a Joker encounter, and it wasn't the aftereffect of Smile-X exposure; it was the aftereffect of JOKER exposure. Fixating on some notion and running wild with it. With the discipline of a seasoned martial artist, Batman shut that door in his mind and focused on his breathing until the Batmobile reached the cave.

* * *

"I really should have done it years ago, Harls. After all, a riddle is nothing but a joke that's too busy showing off how clever it is to bother being funny. All we have to do is knock it down a few pegs and HAHAHAHAAA! Jokles."

"Or ridkers," Harley suggested.

"No," Joker shook his head in a prissy but convincing Nigma impersonation. "No, no, no. Absolutely not. I refuse to dumb it down for the mental midgets. If they can't figure out what a jokle is, they deserve to be confused."

"Whatever you say, Puddin'. So where to we start?"

"RACECAR!"

"Racecars?" Harley squeaked.

"No, no, Harls. No S on the end. Just RACECAR. That way it's spelled the same way backwards and forwards. Much easier than thinking up those stupid anagrams he's always spouting."

"Oh. Like that Torque twisty guy in Bludhaven?"

Joker's face fell.

"Somebody else is doing it?"

"Oh yeah, fer years now."

"RATS! No Formula 1 clown car then. Back to the drawing board."

"What is white when it's dirty?!" Harley cheered. "No? Don't you remember that one from when we were kids, Puddin'? What is white when it's dirty? A blackboard."

"Riddles. We're not playing Jeopardy, Harls. Just find me riddles."

* * *

Sitting at the workstation with a blank log file before him, it was no longer possible for Batman to shut his mind to the events of the night. It was time for a clear, dispassionate analysis of what had occurred and why.

Unlike the fish of his earlier musings, Batman had recognized the bait—the real bait, the bait Joker deliberately set out to lure him to his hellish "classroom", that Batman recognized just fine. He knew the Batsignal display which led to the Hummer which led to the GPS was a trap, he knew the location where the GPS would lead him was a trap, and he acted accordingly.

The trap he didn't see, the hook he bit into of his own free will because he didn't recognize it for what it was, that was not a part of the Joker's plan. Joker didn't know anything about Batman's partnership with Catwoman. He didn't know Selina would take it into her head to 'get the answer before Batman' with a little creative digging at the Iceberg. He couldn't know she'd learn something that would bring her to the 1PP roof and intersect Batman's own investigation at the key moment of discovery. He couldn't know the specter of a Joker trap about to be sprung would prompt Batman to render her unconscious to keep her out of harm's way. It wasn't bait. Since Joker didn't know any of the hidden gears and levers, none of it was deliberately set up to bait him. Batman had done it to himself.

The fact that that proved Joker's "thesis," that was one of the ironies that circled overhead wherever the Joker went. It was the punchline. As the twisted clown himself would undoubtedly phrase it: "That's the joke, Batsypoo. HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!"

And that's why the Batmobile had brought him home on autopilot. That's why he couldn't be clinical about a forced grin. He left the car calmly once it reached the cave, his nerves soothed by those few minutes of focused meditation, but as soon as he sat at his workstation, the image he'd been avoiding confronted him with greater clarity than ever:

His desktop wallpaper was dark, a nearly black bat emblem against a full black background. That blackness behind the glassy computer screen was, for this image, more horribly reflective than a mirror. The dark cowl was barely visible, but the light skin below punched out clearly. There it was, distinct and detailed, his own lips compelled to join in a cosmic joke at his expense: Without compromising her principles or her independence, Catwoman became his partner, just as he'd always dreamed. She fought crime at his side, exactly as he'd wanted, and he pushed her aw…

What… the hell… was that?

* * *

"Okay here's one!" Harley cried happily, pointing to her computer screen. "I stand at the beginning of time, I complete the coming of night; I occur twice in eternity, and I'm always within sight. What am I?"

"This better be funny," Joker said darkly.

"The letter T! So we could, like, go after anybody whose name began with a T, like Tom Thompson or Teddy Tedson or Terry Terri—EEK!"

Harley had to duck as a lead-coated rubber chicken came swinging at her head. It missed her but knocked the computer screen off the desk, its cord pulling Harley's keyboard, a pencil holder and a sack of White Castles down on top of it, and finally erupting into a small spark that ignited the White Castle bag.

"Now it's funny," Joker said dryly. "Put that out, Harls. I'm going for a walk."

A word with "E" at the beginning, an "E" at the end, and only one letter. Was it "E"? No, it was "envelope". A puppy is one, but a dog is not. A kitten is one, but a cat is not. A cookie is one, but a cracker is not. What is it? A word with double letters. What was born in H20, lived in H20, was powered by H20, and died by H20? The Titanic.

NONE OF THEM WERE FUNNY! Just like he said at the beginning. Too busy being clever and forgetting to bring the HA-HA. So far, the only one that had any potential at all was the black and white box that held keys without locks, because dropping a piano on Robin—splat—right at the very second Batman answered the riddle, THAT would be hilarious. The timing would be a bitch though, because you'd waste a good nine or ten pianos just figuring out how fast they fell. And chances are, some busybody would notice nine or ten pianos dropping. 'Cause they can play their stereo as loud as they want, but drop a few pianos out the window and all of a sudden everybody's complaining about the noise.

Then there was setting up the mirror on the sidewalk and a couple closed circuit cameras so you could keep an eye on Batsy's face. Because you had to catch him at the precise second when he started to say the answer—and what if he sneezed, huh? What then? What if you only THOUGHT he was about to answer the riddle and you cut the rope but he was just sneezing? SPLAT! Flattened Robin, wasted piano, and no ha-ha.

This Riddler business was a lot harder than it looked.

* * *

Batman glared at the main monitor from workstation one, the screen whose image was mirrored by default on the giant viewscreen that hovered over the cave.

Bruce had built this system. He knew every program and subroutine, from the criminal database to the Batmobile relays, from the Watchtower uplinks to the override encryptions for the manor telephones. It was supposed to be a closed system; between himself and Oracle, he'd locked it down so that no one could make these kinds of modifications without his say-so or at least without his knowledge. And yet… _What the hell was that?_

Top left corner, small and unobtrusive, he had clustered the icons to interface with Oracle, Nightwing, Robin and the League. Beneath these, a small purple icon flashed. It was obviously an indicator, this pulsing little circle of purple light, like an incoming transmission would flash under one of the other icons. The color could only be Selina's signature, and given the night's events, no incoming message from her could be good—but that's not what Bruce was focused on. He probably had a seriously upset girlfriend on his hands, and Batman might have a royally a pissed Catwoman to contend with, but neither part of his psyche could deal with any of that yet. No part of his mind could get past that flashing circle of purple on his computer screen.

What the hell was it?

How did it get there?

He'd designed every facet of this system.

Every program.  
Every subroutine.  
Every security feature.

There was no way for that thing to be there.

But it was…

_When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth._

The quote that was missing from that new Sherlock Holmes movie. The _principle_ that was missing. _When you eliminate the impossible_… There were events in that story which the criminal perpetrator meant for a gullible populace to take as supernatural. It was a credible scheme for the period. An era clinging to superstition and the occult, they might well believe a dark lord dabbling in black magic could rise from his grave after being hanged. But Holmes was a man of reason. And a man of reason, a man whose very methodology is grounded in eliminating the impossible, that man does not shrug at this notion of magic rewriting the laws of the universe to bring the impossible into being. Holmes should have taken more of a stand against that suggestion of magic that defied all logic and reason…

Just as that damnable flash of purple defied logic and reason. Bruce had built this system and everything in it, and that flashing icon had no earthly business being there.

* * *

Well, Harley looked cute enough in her Harlequery outfit. Green instead of red, yellow instead of black, question marks instead of balls on the end of her tassels. It was an okay look.

Joker's own purple jacket looked fine over a green vest, shirt, and tie. He already had matching hair: hair over the _head_ where the all-important riddling brain was, it was green. So the costume was fine. It was just finding the right riddle.

You couldn't start a Riddler crime without sending Batman a riddle. That was the rule, everybody knew that. There just had to be some way to make the Riddler clue funny…

* * *

_When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth._

Bruce had created every program, database and subroutine in the Batcomputer—including a New Database :: New File :: Unindexed which was immediately divorced from the main systems and subsequently named ::Selina's Decidedly Off-Duty Definitely Not-a-log Chronicle of Whatever She Damn Pleases Meow::. Evidently, that log had been reconfigured to link back to his system just like Oracle's, Robin's, or Nightwing's. The flashing icon was notifying him of a priority entry that required his attention.

That mystery solved, another man would have promptly clicked the icon and read the entry. Bruce's finger moved to do so, but PsychoBat stayed his hand: there was a Joker incident still to write up in his own log, and instinct said that whatever lay beneath that blinking purple icon would command Bruce's immediate attention. It was best to get the Joker matter out of the way first.

With the discipline mastered in another era, Bruce forced the thought of Catwoman from his mind and wrote up the log with icy detachment: his inspection of the escape scene at Arkham, links to the personnel records of the Arkham staff involved, a liquor store robbery quashed on his return to the city, and the results of questioning one willing informant and two reluctant ones before the Batsignal was lit… When he came to those points in the chronicle where Catwoman herself had participated in the night's events, he obviously couldn't block her out of his mind completely, but he was satisfied that he related her part in the affair without compromising the integrity of the log. He even described his own motive for excluding her from the investigation: it was an emotional reaction grounded in fear for her safety, which was an understandable byproduct of their personal relationship. There, that episode logged with clinical objectivity, he then related the discovery and infiltration of Joker's classroom, those aspects of Joker's "lecture" which seemed relevant, and what he was able to learn of the Joker's captives, given their mental state after their ordeal.

There would be a great deal more to learn in the morning, from the students themselves, from the site of their capture, and from…

The morning.

Batman had a full day ahead before the sun set again for a routine patrol. A full day ahead required sleep. He hadn't even— he should have taken a breathalyzer and a sample of his blood as soon as he returned to the cave. The analysis would be ready by now, but he'd forgotten because he had been so—DAMN HER!

Bruce removed the cowl and ran his fingers through his hair.

He had been exposed to Joker toxins. It was necessary to monitor his physical recovery. He had a message waiting from Selina which would, he knew, monopolize his time and attention once he opened it. He needed to get a few hours sleep in if he was going to approach the Joker investigation tomorrow with the mental readiness it demanded.

Put that way, the priorities were obvious. He shut down the workstation with the blinking purple Cat-message unread. He went to the med lab, drew a sample of his blood, breathed into the vapor collector, fed both samples into the tox analyzer and left a note for Alfred to process the results first thing in the morning. Selina would be asleep by now. In the morning, he would simply tell her that he didn't have a chance to read her little missive and whatever was in it would have to wait until after Joker was taken care of. If anything, the remnants of his Smile-X exposure would underline his point: obviously, with a Joker case in progress, Joker was the priority. They would settle their personal issues later.

Bruce grunted at Batman's final word on the matter as he moved towards the costume vault, although the grunt sounded strange with the rictus grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. He ran through the plan once more as he hung up his cape…

_Alfred attending to the blood work…_

He removed his gloves, boots, and utility belt…

_It was a little over two hours after consumption of the antidote when the samples were taken. Alfred wasn't aware of that. If his reading of the analyses confirmed the timeline independently, Bruce could be assured that his recovery was on track…_

And then as he stripped off the tunic and leggings…

_The Selina matter deferred, he could get in a solid four hours' sleep and still make it to the Hudson campus before noon… _

As he pulled on the kimono, he began plotting the avenues of investigation once he reached…

His mind began to wander. He was trying too hard, focusing too purposefully on the task at hand. His routine was off. Granted, his routine was always off when it came to the Joker, but this was off-kilter even for the Joker-norm. Clinical detachment notwithstanding, somewhere in the deep recesses in his brain, that little purple icon continued to flash.

Bruce turned sharply at the top of the stairs and glared back down into the cave.

He couldn't do it. Try as he might, he couldn't completely push her out of his mind. Like that damn flashing purple icon in his mind, she was always there... and would always be there. He'd have to deal with this, one way or another.

But he just couldn't bring himself to go back down and read whatever it was she had written to him. He knew that would take over, and he _had to focus on Joker_ right now.

But if keeping her out was a lost cause, maybe… maybe the answer was in the opposite direction. Don't shut her out (since she won't be shut out anyway). Instead… counterintuitive though it seemed, bring her _all the way in_.

* * *

"Jokles! HAR-LEE! I've got it. It's just like they always say—you know, the smarty pants Theys who are always saying things—your first idea is always your best. What was my first idea?"

"Racecar!"

"No, not that. Jokles. What do they call that, when you put two words together to make a new one? Like Bollywood and Bennifer and orangutan."

"It's called a portmanteau," Harley said, momentarily forgetting to be a ditz.

"Poor man's toes?"

"Portmanteau, like the suitcase. And orangutan isn't one."

"Of course it is. Orange and Tang, breakfast drink of the astronauts. The first astronaut was a monkey. Tang is orange. Orangutan. Jeez, Harl, you can be so stupid sometimes."

"Sorry, Puddin'."

"Portmanteaus?"

"Yeah."

"Pour mant—Oh no, I can't think of a pun that works with 'mant'. Pour mant-woe is me, no punny funny for 'mant'. Or maybe how a dyslexic guy spells 'tomato'? Or no, I've got it! A portly man too heavy to carry his own portmanteau, HA! See Harls, we can do this without dumbing it down for the plebes. Pack up the rubber chicken, we're off to the Batsignal!"

* * *

Despite a Post reporter's last act of desperation several years ago, Selina had no cat powers. Unlike Poison Ivy, she didn't have any telepathic contact with or control over her pets. Nevertheless, when Bruce reached the bedroom, he found Selina asleep on the far edge of the bed (as if to get as far away from him as possible without forsaking comfort. Cats, he learned early, never compromise on their own comfort). Whiskers and Nutmeg were positioned in the center of the bed, their backs to her and facing him, as if they were appointed guardians of a symbolic barrier between them. Both cats raised their heads as Bruce approached and glared with marked hostility.

"Out, both of you," he graveled.

Both cats blinked up at him, unimpressed with the awful specter of Batman giving a Bat-order. Selina did react to the Bat voice, however. She rolled onto her back and shifted a little under the covers before calling him a jackass, and then rolled back onto her hip. The performance—while evidently not enough to wake her—was sufficient to chase away the cats. Bruce climbed into the bed and studied the back of her head for a moment.

_Bring her all the way in..._

He gave her shoulder a poke.

"Wake up, I think I've got it."

"What part of jackass do you not…" she began sleepily, but she trailed off when she saw his face. After a long, still moment she spoke softly. "I see you found him."

Bruce grunted, but the rigid muscles pulling up the corners of his mouth forced his lips slightly open and caused a change in the timbre. Instead of the customary Bat-rumble of acknowledgement, it sounded like an eerily soft chuckle—and it sent a shiver up Selina's spine. Down in the great expanse of the cave, the noise had dissipated quickly enough that it never really registered in Bruce's mind, but here in the coziness of the bedroom, he heard the chuckle-grunt clearly. Even if he hadn't, the look in Selina's eyes made the horror more than clear. Bruce rubbed his fingers absently across the upturned corners of his mouth as he stretched his jaw, as if trying to loosen those muscles, even if only a little. Finally, he gave up and refocused on the task at hand.

"Don't worry about that. Listen, key Arkham staffers disappeared after Joker's escape, just like the armored car drivers after the Scarecrow heists. Joker was lecturing on fear_,_ and he snatched his victims from a haunted house he advertised on the Hudson campus. Apart from the fact that Joker's involved, who does this sound like?"

"You think he's working with Jonathan?" Selina said, sitting up excitedly. "Because the Z have done a disappearing act, and Oswald thinks it's because they just set up a lair for Scarecrow. After what happened last time, it's certainly plausible that they'd want to lay low for a while."

"It fits. If Crane broke Joker out of Arkham, it explains why the escape lacks all the usual Joker markings."

"Yeah, but why. I mean, Jonathan doesn't work and play well with others, and as for Jack—"

"I know. One mystery solved, or potentially solved, leads to the next set of questions. But now we have a theory to go on tomorrow when we hit the Hudson campus."

"We? Eh, hang on there, Handsome. I quit, remember?"

"…"

"Never mind, you obviously didn't read my resignation, and with that echo of a Joker grin on your face, I can guess why. I'll give it to you in person: I quit. I'm going back to crime, and you know why? Ironically, it's because you have a better handle on how that works. I go to Cartiers, attach a jammer to the Phoenix relay, left vent, down, left, left, down, right squiggle, 0010-048-73, jewels that don't belong to me. You say put them back, _and I don't._ We all know our lines, we all have our blocking. Crimefighting, on the other hand—"

"I'm sorry about that."

"You told me to stay, like a cocker spaniel. Do I look like a panting, drooling wonder mutt, Bruce? I don't think I do. And after all these years, I don't think you're capable of being that confused. You tell me to sit and stay, you have to know that's going to go play out like 'put back the ruby tiara' except—wait, what did you say?"

"I said I'm sorry. I overreacted."

"…"

"You've held your own against Joker on numerous occasions, and it was wrong to take the decision out of your hands."

She stared at him in silence for a long moment.

"Well this is new."

"Yes. Yes, it is. Look, I can't claim to be inexperienced with team ups, but, Selina, those are sidekicks and allies. You're the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. You truly are my partner, in every sense of the word. It is new territory. And I may stumble here and there. When that happens, I think it's important to err on the side of caution."

"…"

"Forgive me?"

"No. Bruce, you ask too much. Ask me again in the morning and maybe I'll be able to. But with half your face still bent out of shape that way, it's asking too much. I have to deal with you going after that sick fuck, I don't have the option of—"

"You did exactly the same thing I did, you tossed the rules because it was Joker. We agreed you would not be going after the rogues, Selina. Whenever it comes down to a probable face-to-face with somebody you'd wave to if you pass their table at the Iceberg, you go home."

"You're right."

"You didn't on this, because it was Joker. You followed me, you—wait, what did you say?"

"I said you're right. I told myself I'd just follow for a little while to see where the trail led, but… c'mon, if I didn't want to keep the option open to go in and help you, I would've just gone home, right? I didn't. Because, well like you said: Joker."

And there it was: the piece he'd never considered.

Bruce took a deep breath.

"When we started this, I swore I would never treat you like a Robin. Still, when one of the boys made an error in the field, we would start over the next night. I'd address whatever went wrong so they would take what lessons they could from the experience, but then it was over. We'd start fresh."

"Which one of us do you figure is 'Robin' in this scenario, Bruce?"

"We both are. We're both in unfamiliar waters. We performed less than optimally. We're addressing it. Take the lesson and move on."

"And what's the lesson?"

"It's two-fold. First, we both have to understand how hard it is for the other to see us facing off against that maniac. I think you do know that. Despite the delivery, I think you understand the impetus behind what I did tonight. But if this is going to be a _partnership_, I need to be more aware of how difficult it is for you when I have to go up against him. It won't change what I do or how I do it, but at the very least, I need to acknowledge it. Which leads into the second part of the lesson."

"Which is?"

"We don't put the rules or common sense in a drawer just because it's Joker."

"Is that what we did?" Selina laughed.

"Yes."

"And you really think just deciding we're not going to do it anymore will do the trick?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Despite the rigidness at the edges of his mouth, Selina noticed a slight spasm at one corner and realized at the moment it was as close as he could come to a twitch-smile.

"Okay, deal."

Selina offered her hand, and Bruce looked it quizzically.

"I'd seal it with a kiss, but you have icky Smile-X mouth," she explained, pointing. Bruce looked at the hand again and extended his to shake it, when Selina pounced, pushing him onto his back. "You are so easy sometimes," she giggled before smashing her lips into his…

* * *

The sun rising over Gotham is a spectacular sight: the first rays of golden-orange breaking out of the black of the East River, fanning into a cone of peachy-pink as they stretch towards the land, and finally lifting a ball of blazing white that glistens on the water. So intense, it would hurt the eye if it wasn't broken by the constant motion of the water. Then slowly, imperceptibly pitch-shifting into a burning haze that sizzles through the morning mist and hurls blinding shafts of white onto the giant towers of glass and steel. The moon vanishes, as does man-made illumination…

The pale shafts projecting a Bat emblem on the night sky to summon a vigilante served little purpose in daylight, so no one noticed that the light appeared less yellow than usual, and that the image projected in silhouette on the clouds no longer resembled a bat. Instead, the image just visible for a second before it was obliterated by the brilliant glare of sunlight was a distinct, purple-tinted curve of the top of a question mark, with an equally distinct green-tinted shape below in place of the dot... an equally distinct green-tinted shape that looked very much like a giant, toothy smile.

* * *

To be continued…


	5. Jokles

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 5: Jokles

* * *

_..:: You've reached Selina Kyle. She's a little busy right now doing things that good little girls don't talk about, but if you ask nicely, she'll think about getting back to you. Leave some catnip after the meow. Meow.::.._

Voicemail. What a nuisance. What was it but a 21st Century version of the gatekeeping butler coldly intoning that "Madame is not at home," which meant that she very well might be but she wasn't at home to you, you proletarian troll. Oswald Cobblepot wholly endorsed that sentiment, but not when he was the prole in question. He also would have thought with an actual butler to do her screening on the Wayne Manor landline, the least Selina could do was dispense with the techno-substitute on her cell.

Still, this business was important and Oswald couldn't think of any other way to reach the proud puss. He called the number again, and this time after the meow, he cleared his throat and spoke formally:

"Most amusing. Catwoman, my felicitous feline, I would be much obliged if you would call on me at my establishment later today. Please come at an early hour before the horde of hoi polloi make their appearance, as the business I would discuss is for your ears alone. Kwak."

He hung up, satisfied. For that is how civilized men extend an invitation in an uncivilized age.

* * *

In Bludhaven, Nightwing had never calculated the exact pounds per inch Blockbuster could deliver. He only knew it felt like a bullet the size of a ham smashing into your ribs and slicing through into your core. Up until this moment, it was the ghastliest blow Dick Grayson ever felt. Other injuries were more serious, but for that intense, gelatinous after-pain that lingered long after the hit, shifting and reshifting with each movement, hurling shards of fresh agony with every breath, nothing else came close. Until now.

"Man, that hurt," he said aloud, although there was no one there to hear. Bruce was still at the juice bar, and when he returned, Dick knew he shouldn't bring it up. "That really hurt," he said anyway, rubbing the center of his chest where the racquetball smashed into it.

Bruce set down the glasses and began to blither about the pomegranate, acai and goji berries in the Gotham Racquet Club's signature fruit juice cocktail. Dick winced, knowing he'd bought it on himself. It was just the two of them on the court, but the ball Bruce had hit struck Dick with a force indicative of Batman's strength and athletic prowess. Drawing Bruce's attention to that fact, no matter how vaguely or how roundabout the allusion, was sure to bring out the fop.

"There's a peach mango too, lower calorie and lower carb, but I figure after the exertion of the game, a few extra carbs are just the thing."

Dick sipped the juice, even though the act of swallowing would bring fresh agonies. He knew perfectly well what was behind these sudden invitations for a quick game of racquetball. This was the eighth since the whole nightmare began. Joker's latest stunt riffing on other Rogues' themes was entering its fourth week, and Batman's frustration level had been building since that first riddle left beneath a vandalized Batsignal.

* * *

_..:: You've reached Selina Kyle. She's a little busy right now doing things that good little girls don't talk about, but if you ask nicely, she'll think about getting back to you. Leave some catnip after the meow… ::.._

"C.W., it's Matt. Seems I never see you anymore since Vault closed up. Wondering if I could meet you at your lair later today? Got an issue I'd rather talk about in private.

* * *

"Strawberry and banana might be tasty enough, but it's not very imaginative. I mean this is the Gotham Racquet Club. For what I pay here, I certainly expect something more exotic than a banana smoothie."

Yes, fine. Bruce was frustrated. From what Alfred said, he had the unpleasant duty of waking Bruce and Selina that first morning with two phone calls that would not be put off: Tim, upset that his friend Randy Quad had been among Joker's first wave of victims and nobody thought to tell him, and Riddler, calling Selina to squeal like a stuck pig that he hadn't done it. At that point, she had no idea what "it" was, but he didn't stop to explain. He only kept repeating that he hadn't done it, he had nothing to do with it, and somebody better put a stop to it before (some anagramming nonsense that Dick really couldn't follow, if Alfred even got it right, which was doubtful).

"Blueberries and oranges are among these 'superfoods' you keep hearing about, so that's okay, but at least they could be exotic oranges from someplace more interesting than California. And the blueberries, well, they could grow them in some exclusive and interesting way, couldn't they? Like those cows in Japan that are beer-fed and massaged."

Tim calmed down easy enough. It's understandable that he was upset. He and Randy had been friends since Brentwood. But as soon as Bruce explained that the whole thing came to a head after four in the morning, that he'd been detoxing after a SmileX attack and had gone straight to bed, but that he fully intended to call Tim in the morning and fill him in on all that had happened, well… Tim was a reasonable kid, and he had none of the sidekick/second-fiddle baggage Dick had at that age. He settled down and Bruce had gone down to breakfast expecting a quiet morning with Selina before they set out to investigate a lead at Hudson U—only to find Selina was still on the phone with Nigma. So far from being able to calm him, she couldn't even make sense of what he was saying. She had to go see him in person while Batman started the investigation alone at Hudson. When the dust settled, what were they left with? The longest word in the English language.

* * *

_..:: You've reached Selina Kyle. She's a little busy right now doing things that good little girls don't talk about...::.._

"To Olympus thou art summoned, Lady of Sekhmet and Bast. Though 'tis true you be of Egypt, We have looked on that pantheon as kin since the founding of Alexandria. Come then to Olympus, for we would speak with thee on a matter most—BEEP."

* * *

_Smiles_. The longest word in the English language, because there's a mile between the first letter and the last.

Smiles. The name of a strip mall dental chain in every other city in which it operated. In Gotham, it wisely opted to call itself The Roxmore Dental Group, L.L.C.

Smiles, who did operate five locations in the Gotham suburbs under that Roxmore name and kept an administrative office midtown. It was there Batman found a hellish game show in progress. Joker had zeroed in on the defining characteristic of Riddler's theme: intelligence as the one true virtue and mental dexterity as the factor that should determine the outcome of any contest. In brief: smart is better. Giving that premise his usual deadly spin:

Smart is better Stupid isn't funny Stupid ruins the joke Stupid should die

Joker had come up with _Deapidity!,_ a portmanteau of Death by Stupidity, and quite simply, the sickest game show ever devised. There was a quiz board similar to that on any number of game shows, with a grid of categories and point values. Contestants (i.e. victims) were encased in air-tight tubes, and Joker, as the Master of Ceremonies, would ask them questions. A right answer was awarded several seconds of air, proportional to the point value of the question, sucked from the other contestants' tubes. A wrong answer forfeited air. A really _ stupid_ answer—or any comment Joker found stupid whether it related to a question or not—would be met with the immediate sacrifice of all remaining air in the victim's tube. It was a ghastly contest, and four contestants had died before Batman even arrived. A fifth suffered brain damage, and a sixth had only been released from the hospital that morning.

"I'm not saying they should actually massage the blueberries, that would be terrible. But they could fortify the soil in some way that made them a little more interesting and made the result a little more expensive. Pour champagne and brandy into the dirt…"

Dick could understand Bruce wanting an hour of Zogger to take the edge off. You walk into a Joker setup, you never know what you're going to find, but if you did have expectations, a bottled water salesman saying "I'll take Famous Stooges for ten seconds of air" wouldn't be high on the list.

"Or maybe, you know what they could do, have some special sun lamps made with some kind of, oh I don't know, Kryptonian crystals, that would be pretty rare. And these crystals would amplify the sunlight, so they'd become these Super Berries."

* * *

_..::…Leave some catnip after the meow….::.._

"Selina, this is Victor Frieze. I wonder if you would join me at the Iceberg tonight. I will have a special table reserved under the large stalactite, with a privacy screen of extra ice to freeze out the gawkers."

* * *

Dick could understand that, with Joker still free after weeks of this insanity, Bruce didn't want to risk a Zogger-related injury. So it was racquet ball. And given Bruce's need to unleash the full force of his frustration, it had to be with somebody who knew his secret. It had to be someone for whom the awesome spectacle of Batman's power propelling Bruce Wayne's serve would not be an unexpected and inexplicable shock.

"Superman gets his power from the sun, doesn't he? So these Super-Blueberries, that would be something worth paying for."

* * *

_..:: …Meow..::.._

"Twinkle, twinkle, Cheshire Cat. How I wonder where you're at. I hope it's coming to tea with me! At the Humpty Dumpty lair on Avenue C."

* * *

Dick understood all of that, but NONE OF IT made his chest hurt any less, and NONE OF IT made the fop's mindless prattling about fruit juice any easier to take.

"Interesting," Dick lied. "But I better be going. Old friend from school is in town. I thought we'd meet up at the gatehouse, walk the campus a little and talk over old times."

Bruce's eyes flickered, recognizing the old code. The two men parted outside the racquet club, and a few minutes later, Bruce's Porche pulled up in front of the old gatehouse that marked the entrance to the Hudson campus.

* * *

"Eddie, this isn't healthy. Now look at me."

A despondent Edward Nigma raised his eyes listlessly, then let them sink back to a non-descript spot on his carpet.

"Did you eat?" Selina asked severely.

"No."

"C'mon then, I'll take you to _Petite Abeille_."

"I don't feel like going out."

"C'mon, Eddie, you have to eat. What sounds like the Riddler's favorite breakfast?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Wrong! Waffle. Sounds like 'baffle,' remember?"

"Except it doesn't. Spelled the same. Doesn't sound the same. You never noticed 'cause it was early when I called."

"I noticed. I'm wide awake now and I just said 'waffle' and 'baffle.' You don't think I noticed? I play along, Eddie, because you're a friend and a sweetie and I love you. I'm on the _East End_, for Bast's sake, and for the second time this month because you had to go and put your lair in this sewer. So feel the goddamn love, put on your coat, and let's get some food into you."

"Death by Stupidity, 'Lina. It's brilliant. It's inspired. Why didn't I think of it? Making the dullards pay for their stupidity in the most brutal, absolute terms. Making them suffer for it, and then yanking them right out of the gene pool."

"It's not 'brilliant,' Eddie, it's Joker. You didn't think of it because you're not a homicidal maniac. That's not a character flaw."

"I could be. I could be a homicidal maniac, I could learn. If I could have ideas like that, shit. Death to the stupid people. It's just so… Just… So…" He trailed off into a sigh of infinite despair. Then… "Go away, 'Lina. I want to be alone."

"Come on, Garbo. It's not as bad as all that."

"Isn't it? Joker stumbles into the best Riddler escapade ever, like a drunken frat boy into a dumpster. Hugo Strange solves the ultimate riddle before I do. Batman gets the one woman in all of Gotham nightlife who can keep up, looks incredibly hot in green, and—echht."

"Eddie," Selina said sweetly, lifting Nigma an inch off his chair by the throat. "It's been quite a while since I had to remind you about _the rules_."

"No *koff* bat-cat," Eddie wheezed.

"Good. Now that you're a little more cooperative," she said, pulling him to his feet without letting go, "get your coat and run a comb through your hair. I'm taking you out to _Petite Abeille_. You have to eat something, and I can use the energy too. I've got a lot of calls to return this afternoon."

* * *

Dick got into the Porsche, closed the door, and thanked God.

"What did you see?" Bruce asked, pulling back into traffic.

"At the juice bar? Nothing."

"The signal, 'a friend from school,' I thought you saw something compromising."

"Only you prattling about massaging blueberries like Kobe beef. I couldn't take it anymore. I figured if we got out of there, we could, y'know, talk like people."

Bruce grunted but said nothing. Dick realized that, even in the privacy of a closed car, if there was going to be conversation, he would have to start it:

"The Merkewitz guy got out of the hospital this morning?"

"Yes, full recovery. That's the last from the Riddler episode."

"And there weren't any serious injuries from Joker's take on Penguin, Two-Face or Freeze, right?"

"The fact that they occurred is the problem," Bruce spat. "We've been a step behind him every step of the way. No sooner did I figure out he was mimicking Scarecrow and he'd moved on to Riddler. I took every precaution at the Batsignal to intercept him when he tried to leave a second riddle, and he'd already snatched an ostrich from the zoo and was holding Mario Battali at umbrella-gunpoint, trying to make him add a new layer to turducken."

Dick stifled a laugh.

"It's not funny," Bruce said through clenched teeth.

Maybe it was their relative positions: Bruce driving a sports car, Dick in the passenger seat, discussion of a theme rogue. Dick became twelve again.

"It's a little funny, Bruce. An osturducken is funny."

"An osturduckenigeon," Bruce said, as if giving the formal Latin name for a particularly virulent strain of bubonic plague.

Dick threw his head back, laughing uncontrollably.

"Ohmygod, HE PUT A PIGEON INSIDE THE CHICKEN!"

Bruce gripped the steering wheel harder, his scowl deepening as he regarded the road ahead like a henchman who was asking for it… After a moment, Dick looked out the window, ashamed. It was Joker. People were dead. More would die if they didn't catch him.

"Sorry," he said quietly. "So before the dust settled on the Penguin thing, he moved on to Two-Face?"

"Yes. The notion of a coin toss deciding who lives and who dies is apparently funny enough as it is. He didn't find it necessary to make any changes to Two-Face's M.O. Quite the reverse. He embraced it so thoroughly that he outmaneuvered me completely. When I realized he was playing with other Rogues' themes, I figured he wouldn't act as Two-Face until the 22nd. Instead…"

"Instead, he acted on the second Tuesday of the month," Dick said, remembering the headline. "Then he went on to do Mr. Freeze with that 'Snow Hotel,' and in a move we all should have seen coming but didn't, he returned to the Two-Face motif a _second_ time on the 22nd."

"We were lucky both coin tosses went our way," Bruce said grimly.

"The one for you didn't," Dick noted.

Again, Bruce said nothing. He'd been placed in more Joker deathtraps than he could count. That this one involved strapping him to a giant silver dollar whose Liberty head had been marred by clown make-up didn't make it any harder to escape. The coin tosses that concerned him were the ones whose outcome could have resulted in the deaths of innocents. Those had come up good—by sheer luck. While grateful for the outcome, it bothered Bruce that anything as sacred as a victim's life came down to chance. If only he'd figured it out sooner…

"So what's next?" Dick asked. "If he's been a step ahead each step of the way, it seems like the way to stop him is to figure out what's next and get there first, right?"

"I wish it were that simple," Bruce graveled. "I've been trying to do just that. Anticipate who he might emulate next and how he would 'reinterpret' their theme. The possibilities are… troubling."

"The way you say that it sounds worse than regular Joker-troubling."

"Mad Hatter. Between the playing cards and the nonsense, it's a natural for him. But he hasn't gone there yet. He may be waiting, holding it in reserve, building towards it for a finale. And if so…"

"Bruce?"

"The Cheshire Cat is nothing but a smile."

"You're worried about Selina?"

"Very. And I've promised not to bench her or send her out of harm's way. Damn her."

The part of Dick who had reverted to his pre-teen Robin only moments before now raged internally. "How the heck did she manage that?" he wanted to wail. But the adult man held the "Holy Special Treatment" in check. Instead he waited, and when Bruce said nothing, he cleared his throat.

"She's a big girl, Bruce. You know she can handle whatever comes her way."

"I'm not sure I can," Bruce replied. "The upside to all this is that the other Rogues are so outraged by Joker's behavior, it's given her license to work with me openly. If we're seen together, it's no more suspicious than if Cobblepot or Crane knew something that could help me find him and demanded to come along for the beatdown."

"Except a team-up with Catwoman, you don't have to worry about a knife in the back when it's over."

"There is that," Bruce said, permitting a lip-twitch. But then… "There's a more serious worry where Catwoman is concerned."

"Yeah, him carving out her smile to be his Chershire Cat."

"Not her safety, Dick. It is a concern, but as you said, she's a big girl, and as I said, I… made a promise. We both agreed to simply deal with that worry privately and not let it interfere with the work. No, my deepest fear about Joker and Catwoman is what he'll do when and if he gets to _her_ theme."

* * *

Harley's head hurt.

She didn't know anything about microelectronics and she didn't know much more about the electro-chemical nature of the brain. Idiopathic hyposomnia. Low THS levels. Frontal lobe deficit. What the fuck? The only way she got through NeuroSci 100 was going to Professor Dave's house to help him test his new hot tub, and the only reason she passed 400 was because Doctor Steve had a foot fetish. It was one thing for Puddin' to ask her to make a Scarface sock puppet, but how the heck was she supposed to make a mind control hat? Disrupting electrical and chemical activity in the brain to inhibit judgment and paralyze the will? HOW?

She didn't want to let her Puddin' down, but she couldn't see any way they could copy Mad Hatter without breaking into his place and taking some of his stuff. She closed the book that had given her such a headache and went downstairs. Mistah J would be angry, but she just had to tell him. She would dress up as Alice, she would paint giant playing cards, she would make lifesize chessmen, but there was just no way she could figure out the mind control…

"That's it, now you stay here where it's nice and warm. HAHAHAHA. Daddy will come and feed you. Yes, he will."

…headgear.

"'Cause you is vewy, vewy hungwy, isn't you?"

"Puddin'?" Harley asked. Mistah J didn't feed the hyenas, and she'd never heard him talk to them that way.

"That's why Daddy is going to feed you… and water you… so you can grow nice and big and… flowery. Yeah."

Flowery?

"We can show those little piss-takers that Daddy is not a complete clown."

"Puddin', are you talkin' to yourself?" Harley asked tremulously.

"No. Just talking to my seedlings," he called out. Harley peered into the living room and saw him hunched over a long flower box.

"Talkin' to… the seedlings?"

"Ignore her, she's got issues," Joker confided to the soil.

* * *

Even on date nights, Selina drove into the city on her own. She did appear in the cave before setting out, in order to peak at the At-Large list and Batman's planned patrol route. It made for easier rendezvous without a lot of guesswork and searching. But this was not date night, so Bruce was surprised to see her examining the holographic map when he came out of the costume vault.

"Looking for something?" he asked—and then nearly dropped to a defensive crouch out of sheer instinct. Something about the way she turned to look at him. Bruce wasn't even sure what it was. There was nothing overtly hostile in the move, or in her expression but… _ something_ about it set off the old alarms, the learned reflexes honed over years of facing off against… criminals.

"Not exactly," Catwoman said, seeming very much her old self (although if that were true, Bruce asked himself, why did he just think of her as Catwoman rather than Selina?) "I'm here at Oswald's request. As well as a few other people, but Ozzy was the most… _explicit_. He suggested I use the signal, but the cops are keeping an eye on it after that Joker mess. It won't last of course, but for the moment, getting to the signal is a pain and it's easier to just go to high ground and play 'spot the car.'"

"I see," came the low gravel that everyone but Selina found menacing. "Since you found me, should we talk here? Or does it need to be in the city where Cobblepot's agents can see?"

"Here will do."

Batman scowled, still puzzled at what exactly in her manner was setting off his defensive instincts, but PsychoBat suggested (and for once had a point) that he worry about non-threat Selina _later_ and give his full attention to her message from genuinely dangerous Rogues.

Except she wasn't saying anything yet, despite the fierce Bat-scowl. So he walked past her to shut down the hologram and then turned back to face her. The movement brought their bodies much closer together, which usually got her talking.

"He's pissed," Catwoman said frankly. "They all are, but Ozzy is the most worked up. His theme is 'the only one that tastes good deep fried,' as he put it."

"And?"

"You and I aren't the only ones who toss the rulebook when it's Joker, Bruce. If anyone else pulled something like this, they'd have had a close encounter with a headless horseman by now. An arctic deep freeze, exploding question marks and the business end of an umbrella, at the very least. But it's not anyone else, it's Joker, and I guess they all feel like: why should we risk life and laughing gas going after him when there's someone handy who's going to do that anyway."

"I go after him to protect innocents, Catwoman, not to settle the score for an irate criminal element who feels their toes are being stepped on."

"Gee, thank you so much for clearing that up, Dark Knight. Here I thought it was just an excuse to wear a cape!

Bruce's mouth dropped open in utter shock. WHO did she think she was…

"Look, I think we all know what you do and why you do it. But _they_ all wanted me to talk to you, so—"

"Cowards."

"Not exactly. They just know I'm the only one who can get this far into the conversation without you throwing batarangs at my head."

"Don't push it," he graveled.

"Oh please, BRING ON THE BATARANGS, Handsome. Because it's the lack of those things whizzing past my ears right now that put me in this ridiculous position. One or two phone calls - like Ozzy or Eddie – FINE. But Maxie Fucking Zeus? These are small-r rogues treating me like the Bat-Pager, and I'm pretty damn pissed about it!"

"So sharpen your claws on them, not me," Psychobat snarled.

"I would LOVE to. But the fact is, Ozzy did have some information that may actually be important, and the rest of them, if they didn't have the pressure valve thinking they were getting a message through, I frankly don't know what they might do."

"Information first, speculation second. What did Cobblepot say?"

"Missing pigeons. Homing pigeons, to be exact. There's a whole clique that train and race them around the city, apparently. Almost two hundred have gone missing. All this time we've been assuming when he went on to a new theme, he was done with the last one—except for, you know, going back and doing Two-Face a second time. But… what if it's more than that? What if he's not done with Scarecrow, Riddler and Freeze just because he goes on to do somebody else? It seems like he might be planning on going back to Penguin and doing something more with birds."

"Possible. But it's more likely that he took the birds intending to use them and then lost interest before he got around to it."

"Well, Ozzy is concerned that they're going to show up on his door in a feathery heap with death smiles on their beaks."

"Anatomically impossible."

"Impossible or not, Oswald finds the idea disturbing—which frankly, I can understand—and he's making plans to respond, just in case. Bruce, right now they're waiting for you to do something. They won't wait forever. They're dangerous, you know that better than anybody. Eventually, they'll get tired waiting, or he'll go too far and step on the wrong toes, or… Hell, he's Joker, he might just step in the wrong place and start the dominos falling by accident. Then it's Rogue War, Bruce. I know you don't want that. I don't want that. Fuck, even they don't want that or they wouldn't have made me their Bat-Pager."

"In other words, it would be better if I stop Joker today rather than tomorrow. I agree, Selina, but I felt that long before this conversation. It's always a race against disaster when Joker is active. Knowing the names of the people involved doesn't make it any more or less serious."

* * *

_..:: You've reached Selina Kyle. She's a little busy right now doing things that good little girls don't talk about, but if you ask nicely, she'll think about getting back to you. Leave some catnip after the meow. Meow.::.._

"Uh, Catty?" Harley whispered into the receiver.

"Unbelievable. Do you know how many different roses there are? Thousands," Joker said in the background.

"Catty, I gotta talk to you?" Harley whispered, hoping she was loud enough to be heard on the recording.

"You can even make your own and name it yourself. Think of it, Harls: The Buster Keaton Rose. HAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

_..:: BEEP ::.._

Shit, she'd run out of time and she hadn't even said her name. Harley hid her phone behind her back and hit redial.

"Says here that wisteria can take up to seven years to flower," Joker informed her, pointing to a gardening website. "It's a member of the pea family."

* * *

To be continued…


	6. Logic

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 6: Logic

* * *

The Barrington Building: a modest 21 stories of neo-gothic limestone, architectural giant of its day, stubbornly holdings its ground amidst the steel and glass towers that grew up around it. Batman always liked the Barrington. It had character. Even if its gargoyles were too recessed to accept the batline and even if its patinated bell tower was too low to make an effective lookout, he admired it as a landmark of Old Gotham.

He glanced down at it as he swung west towards Fairmont and a possible but unlikely Hacienda location in its Lipstick Lounge. Batman didn't really expect to find anything. Lips, lipstick, dentures, teeth, these were so far removed from the laughter motif that he wouldn't normally waste his time, but since he had no good leads to follow, he would tack two or three of these longshot locations onto each patrol. It let him feel he was accomplishing something, at least, instead of waiting passively for… what was that?

Batman shifted his body, mid-swing, and released the one batline as he fired another to slow his approach to the Barrington roof.

"Lenses engage," he ordered. He had seen light and movement on the eighteenth floor. Not much, but enough to justify taking a look, particularly when he had new equipment to test. "Thermal residue scan, engage," he said, entering through the window closest to the movement he'd observed. "Calibrate for last ten seconds… recalibrate and overlay fifteen seconds… twenty… twenty-five… twenty-six…"

"Gotcha," he thought, noting the faint echo of a heat bloom. More interested for the moment in mastering his new crimefighting tool, he continued to increase the temporal range of the scanners. Noting the intensity and movement of the heat blooms as he counted up to thirty seconds, to forty-five, to sixty seconds in the past, he was developing an understanding for the sensor and how it displayed. In the future, he would be able to instantly assess if an intruder passed through seconds or minutes before.

And the tactical cost was minimal. To gain that future advantage, he'd given this particular intruder a few extra minutes to proceed with his crime unaccosted, but Batman knew that Ederline Inc. had the only safe worth opening in this building and it would take a typical thief this long to reach the door and unpack his tools.

At least that was his theory until he reached the outer office and heard an odd rhythmic whirr coming from behind the door. Prudence demanded finding out what the noise was before entering. Safecrackers sometimes used explosives, and they didn't always take the precautions that they should. Rather than bursting through the door as originally planned, Batman moved silently to the window… He inched along the ample ledge that made old buildings like this so accommodating to the modern crimefighter… and then… batarang in hand… he peered through the window to the inner office to see…

Catwoman sitting at the desk, on an angle in the high-backed executive chair, her right elbow propped on the headrest, her own head resting on the her hand in a posture of infinite boredom. With her left hand, she listlessly spun the dial on the open safe door.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded, crawling through the window without any of the theatrics another burglar would merit.

"There you are," she practically yawned. "Took your sweet time. What the hell were you doing out there?"

"Calibrating the thermal echo lenses. I _asked_ what you're doing here."

"We need to talk," she said, shifting as quickly as any cat from languid boredom to crisp, all-business efficiency.

"You have a comlink," he said severely.

"Didn't feel like using it. If I said 'meet me on the Moxton roof in five minutes,' you'd say what? 'Is it important' or 'What's it about' or 'Can it wait 'til I'm done tying the Triads in a knot'. I figured this way, if you were free you'd drop in, and if you were busy you'd keep going. And either way I don't have to get into the whole thing on the OraCom."

This was the nightmare: feline logic meets Bat Mantle. He wanted Catwoman to become his partner, he wanted her to share in his mission—he did not want her inserting feline logic into the process.

"Fine, Moxton roof, five minutes," he said, since there was no point in prolonging an inquiry once feline logic had entered the conversation. Her reasons made sense to her, and she didn't care if anyone else saw it that way or not.

When he reached the Moxton roof, however, she was uncharacteristically hesitant.

"Well?" he prompted.

"I've got the break you've been looking for," she said tentatively. "It'd be nice if you could embrace that part and not get how you get."

"More specifics and we'll see," he said grimly.

"I know where Joker is—or at least, I know the Hacienda he's calling home at the moment. Harley asked me to come over in the morning."

* * *

I was expecting the kneejerk: "No, absolutely not, the Bat has spoken, grunt." Instead, I got to see that incredible mind go to work. Those eyes flickering ever so slightly, sifting through every conceivable possibility with all that strategic awareness. That mind that authored protocols that could bring down the Justice League, it was churning, churning… it gave me such a rush, I could have torn off the costumes and done him right there.

"No," he said finally. "There's no way to use it."

"Let's not be defeatist about this. There's always a way. No matter how many cameras or motion detectors they put up, no matter how many armed guards and biometric scanners and inches of reinforced titanium, there is always a way."

"This isn't a vault," he said (with that typical crimefighter lack of imagination).

"Sure it is. It's problem-solving. Getting into a vault is nothing but problem solving."

He had this scowl, like in the old days when he thought I wasn't getting it (stealing is illegal) when in fact he was the one missing the salient point (I didn't care).

It was frustrating. He is SO SMART except for that big blockage of crimefighter dumb sitting right smack in the middle of it.

"Look, I know you can't go plowing in there tonight when Harley just gave me the address, but tomorrow's a whole new story…

I really felt if I could just break through that stiff, inflexible prig part of his psyche…

"I mean, we're sharing a roof right now, right? Look at you, standing there doing the whole 'I'm Batman.' Cape, bat on the chest, acid indigestion look on your face…" I stepped closer (which is really the only way to short circuit the inflexible prig in my experience) and let a clawtip trace the bottom of the emblem batwing as I said "Who's to say you're not slipping a tracker on me right now… You could... put a hand anywhere, and I doubt I'd notice when I'm so preoccupied by your—"

"Enough!"

Typical pushback. Literally. It broke my heart the first time he did it, but now that I know what it means, I rather like it.

"See, right there," I smiled. "Mission accomplished, I'm sure I'm wearing some terribly clever, obscenely expensive piece of undetectable bat-tech now, something you can use to follow me tomorrow when I meet the tassel twit, and then once I've left—"

"No. Selina, this is not a conversation. You are not accepting any invitations to a Hacienda, not when he's 'test-driving' other Rogues' themes. Not when the Cheshire Cat is nothing but a disembodied SMILE. I don't care what I said, I don't care what I promised. You're not going. This is not negotiable."

Remember when I talked about that fine strategic mind of his? Scratch all that. Because there wasn't a worse thing the mind that authored protocols could have said, and if he was half the strategic genius he's said to be, he would have known that. I've got a kneejerk of my own: when a stiff-necked crimefighter tries to lay down the law with me, that law must be picked up, batted around until the stitches break apart and all the catnip and stuffing starts comes spilling out the seams, and then the whole mess laid at his feet like a mostly-dead chipmunk.

"…"

"…"

The Cheshire Cat really hadn't occurred to me, but now, thanks to Captain Thou-Shalt-Not, I was honor-bound to go to the Hacienda tomorrow and see what Harley wanted.

"I'll be careful," I said, thinking of that classic John Tenniel wood engraving with the Cheshire Cat's head floating without a body over the King and Queen of Hearts.

"No, Selina. You can't do it. I won't have it."

"Bruce," I whispered, "What happened to 'we don't put the rules in a drawer because it's Joker'?"

"What happened to you not caring what the rules are in the first place? Selina, you can't do this. It is _too dangerous_."

"…"

It's a paradox that being independent sometimes means you get backed into doing things you don't really want to. Now that he'd put that damn Cheshire Cat image in my brain, I didn't particularly _want_ to go to the Hacienda. But I absolutely could not let Batman forbid it like he's my lord and master.

"What if you met her somewhere else," he began, and I leaned forward. If he actually had a way out of this tangle, I would overlook that the fact that Bat-prick was getting his way. "Somewhere near this Hacienda but public. I can secure the location beforehand, keep an eye on you, know you're safe…"

"And then follow her home," I murmured. "That'll work."

"It should. But when Joker is involved, no matter how sound the plan, expect the unexpected."

* * *

_ - BUMP bump-a-dum ba-DUM… _

Okay, now Harley was really worried.

_ - BUMP bump-a-dum ba-dum… _

Talking to the plants was bad enough.

_ - The minute you sprout through the dirt, I can see you are a flower of distinction, a real acid-squirter. _

Now he was singing them show tunes.

_ - So flowry, leaves so lean. Say wouldn't ya like to know what made my hair just as green? _

Puddin's way of just talking to the plants—all "Daddy" this and "Daddy" that—seemed to be… well, she didn't like to think of it this way, but it was almost like he was _mocking_ Red.

_ - Do ya wanna have fun? Fun? Fun? How about a few laughs? Laughs? Laughs? _

Which would go over even worse than the implication that Puddin' could do her theme better than she did.

_ - Hey, big Joker… _

Red could be a bit much when she got to calling the plants her babies and all that.

_ - Hey, big Joker… _

But she never called herself "Mummy" when she talked to them.

_ - HEY BIG JOKER! _

And she certainly never sang to them.

_ -Pourrrrrrrr a little water on me. _

* * *

It was agreed that Selina wouldn't wear a comlink. Harley alone was not a concern, but if she wasn't truly alone, if she was fronting for Joker, there were too many variables to consider. Joker had made alliances with Luthor, Brainiac, and countless other high-tech villains in the past. If this was a Joker operation rather than a simple meeting with Harley, the risk of a link being scanned for and discovered was simply too great, given the negligible benefits.

So Batman could only watch the proceedings from a discreet distance. Selina had picked an upscale midtown chocolate shop and cafe for the meeting, and Matches Malone was deemed too "scruffy" for the surroundings. He'd assumed a blander, less conspicuous disguise, which still left him dissatisfied when he actually got to the location. There were no men in the shop, not one. He felt out of place, and he knew that feeling conspicuous in his surroundings was even more dangerous than looking it. So he'd simply bought a paper and a chocolate bar and gone across the street to wait for a bus.

He sat at the bus stop reading his paper, saw Selina's approach, saw her note his new location, and saw her go inside. Through the window, he saw her approach the counter, place an order, and take it to a table where he had an excellent view (Good Kitty). Then he saw Harley arrive, and—to the extent that he could find anything connected to Joker amusing—he was mildly amused to see Harley had taken none of the pains he had with a disguise. "Conspicuous" didn't begin to cover it. Chocolate-colored fedora and trench coat, dark glasses, and red shoes with a black and white harlequin-patterned heel. Only Harley Quinn…

After almost half an hour of chit-chat, both women stood, Selina paid the check and they left together. They walked side by side to the corner, and Bruce felt his insides churn at the nightmare scenario that presented itself: Harley must have extended an invitation to go back to the Hacienda, and for reasons defying understanding, Selina had accepted.

Feline logic! Whatever incomprehensibly dangerous thing she was attempting, that was going to be her explanation for it. Feline logic. Feline logic tainting the mission. Feline logic ensnaring the Bat mantle. This was so unspeakably unacceptable—

Then Selina hailed a cab and Harley turned the corner heading towards 38th Street.

Bruce swallowed hard, willed his heartbeat back to a normal rhythm, and followed Harley home as planned. He couldn't risk a cell call to Selina while he was tailing Harley, so he was unable to debrief her for over an hour. He was pleased, however, to find her waiting in the satellite cave instead of in the penthouse.

"We did it again," she said with a grim scowl that seemed completely out of place on her lovely features, but which reminded Bruce of himself. "We scared ourselves silly because it was Joker. And we did it to ourselves. Ha. Ha. Ha." After the desert-dry delivery, she broke into an eerily hyper-wide smile that made Bruce's blood run cold.

"Please don't do that," he graveled.

"His Mad Hatter scheme has nothing to do with the Cheshire Cat, Bruce. Nothing at all. Know what he's planning for Jervis? Beer hats."

Batman had logged more man-hours analyzing Joker's pathology than anyone alive, but no amount of experience ever prepared you for the next insanity. In the time it took him to process the syllables (and prevent his mouth from dropping open), Selina went on:

"Apparently, our favorite couple had quite a spat about it. She: _Disrupting electrical and chemical activity in the brain to inhibit judgment and paralyze the will? HOW?_ He: _Duh, Harls, BEERHAT!"_

"That's his Mad Hatter scheme? Just hats? No playing cards, no Cheshire grin?"

"Don't get too excited, Handsome. It's still plenty Joker-sick. You know how the typical beer hat works, right? Like a baseball helmet with a container on each side, with drinking tubes leading down. Jack's idea is to lock the hat onto someone's heads, basically. Fill the containers with a binary explosive: stuff that's inert separately but mixed 'em together, big boom. He feeds those tubes down into a bladder where the chemicals will come into contact if they're released, and of course, guess who's holding the remote control."

"Like strapping a hostage with explosives to make them do what their captors demand."

"Right. Not the regular type of Mad Hatter mind control, but he'd be making people do what he says… with hats. Mount a little camera on the helmet, earpiece to give the orders. 'Now go and pants that bank manager, hahaha.'"

"I asked you to please not do that."

"Well anyway, that's the Mad Hatter scheme, when and if he gets there. You know she didn't call me to rat him out on Jervis."

"No… What's he going to do to Ivy?"

"Piss her off."

"That's a given. Did Quinn have any specifics?"

"Not the ones you want, not the Who-What-When-Where for what happens next. She was specific enough about her own fears though. Ivy loathes Joker, everybody knows that. Joker starts picking on the plants, Pammy's going to go after him and Harley gets caught in the middle. Ivy kills Joker or Joker kills Ivy, or one of them misses and hits her. There's no way to spin it that doesn't end catastrophically bad for Harley—and yes, before you say it, it's all bad for Gotham too, but these are Harley's priorities we're talking about."

"Noted. Unfortunately, without specifics, knowing he's taken up Ivy's theme isn't enough. Particularly if Cobblepot's information is correct and he's still planning something with birds."

"You dismissed that idea. You said he probably got bored with Ozzy or that he just forgot about it."

"Yes, but now he has a detailed Mad Hatter crime in development when he's superficially moved on to Ivy. There's mounting evidence that he could act on anyone's theme at any time, or even mix and match."

"Mix… and match?" Selina said, blanching with horror.

* * *

It was a beautiful day at the Gotham Botanical Gardens. A cloudless blue sky looked down on the preparations for the 103rd Annual Orchid Show. A cloudless blue sky that assured all who were planning to attend that they could don their prettiest flowered hats and leave their umbrellas at home.

The Grenvilles were attending, of course, Eleanor Grenville having founded the first Gotham Orchid Society back in 1893 and co-sponsoring the first show with the Van Geissen Garden Club several years later. The Ashton-Larrabys would be attending as well, since Randolph Larraby was exhibiting—in theory. All he'd really done was admire some orchids at a farmer's market in Winter Park, Florida when he was passing through on a business trip five years ago. He'd chatted with the fellow running the stall, not even about orchids but about golf courses in the area, and they played a few rounds during the course of his stay and exchanged addresses at the end of it. When he got back to Gotham, Randolph send the guy a postcard with a picture of the famous 14th Green at Bristol Country Club, and his new acquaintance wrote back. _He'd_ sent a postcard from his own business, picturing a prize orchid. Gladys saw it, and when Randolph told her the story, she zeroed in on the orchid. All of a sudden he had a passionate interest in horticulture whether he wanted to or not.

Gladys was holding court at the display of _his_ prize _cattleya citrine_, explaining that it might have been "dreadfully _recherché"_ for a quickrich industrialist to be breeding orchids back when it was the Fords and Morgans trying to rub elbows with the Waynes and the Vanderbilts, but today with "all these new internet people" arriving on the scene, an old-fashioned industrialist was practically an aristocrat by compar…

Her voice faded into the burr of a dozen others, and Randolph was free to wander.

* * *

It was the worst possible time for Justice League alert. With Joker free and liable to strike at any moment... Gotham came first for Batman, Clark knew that more than anyone and he also knew that Joker was free, which meant that he fully understood what he was asking.

Bruce had rubbed his eyes for a moment when the signal came in… If West and O'Brien could handle it alone, Clark wouldn't be asking. He forwarded the event calendar to Oracle, and told her to pinpoint the five most probable targets for Mad Hatter, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Two-Face, Scarecrow and Riddler crimes, and then to assign Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl, Huntress and Catwoman to keep an eye on them. He would monitor the newsfeeds and the Oracom if his circumstances permitted, and with any luck, he would be back in two or three hours.

* * *

By a fantastic coincidence, Randolph Larraby's casual wanderings seemed to be steering him straight towards the Persephone Pavilion, the one spot on the grounds where there was not a flower to be seen—but where he could get a drink.

He passed one other truant as he went, standing there on the clear blue day with the only umbrella in sight. White gloves too, which made Randolph walk a little faster. The stranger might not be fluttering around the brassavolas, but white gloves argued that he was more Gladys's type of exhibitor than Randolph's. He kept walking… then felt a slight pang as he passed the fellow and glimpsed his pale skin. A skin condition would explain the umbrella and the gloves, and the only reason somebody hypersensitive to the sun would come to an event like this is if he was a fellow drag-along like Randolph. He turned back to extend an olive branch.

"Join me for a drink in the pavilion?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so," a vague familiar voice replied, pressing a button in the umbrella handle… "You shouldn't either." …and a squeal from the speaker over the Persephone Pavilion announced the garden PA system was warming up.

Music followed, a few wispy strings Randolph felt he should know—which then snapped into recognition when the brass kicked in. The Gotham Opera, Wagner, the Ride of the Valkyries.

"Don't want to miss the fun" was as much as Randolph heard before the first splat. He foolishly looked up, glimpsing a virtual cloud of birds approaching before an eyeful of foul-smelling glop blotted out the sight.

Randolph staggered back and nearly fell down as another splat and another landed on his clothes. Screaming began in the distance, coming from the main rows of exhibits, then another SPLAT—what the hell was that, a pigeon? SPLAT! SPLAT-SPLAT-SPLAT! and he was done trying to figure out what was happening.

"FLY, MY WELL-FED PRETTIES, FLY!" he heard in the distance as he began to run blindly for the shelter of the pavilion. And finally, the trademark "HAHAHAHAHAAAA" erased any doubt as to who the pale stranger might be and why that voice was so hauntingly familiar.

* * *

The transporter in the satellite cave was closer to the Botanical Gardens than the one at the manor, and Selina was waiting patiently when Batman returned. Seeing nothing beyond a missing cape and some scorch marks on his boot, she launched into her prepared speech:

"You know I love you, calm down. It wasn't Barbara's fault, it wasn't Tim's fault, it wasn't Cassie's fault, calm down. Shit happens, literally in this case, and there's nothing anybody could have done to stop it. Calm down."

"Joker—"

"Nobody got hurt."

"Joker at—

"None of them and none of us, so please—"

"I was gone for less than hour when this started—"

"Calm—"

"Stop saying that."

"Down."

"We knew Ivy was a possibility. Explain to me why nobody was watching the orchid show."

"Because we weren't, Bruce. I was watching Robinson Park, between the zoo and the aviary, that seemed the most likely spot for an Ivy-hybrid crime. Robin was on the west side, keeping an eye on the Hudson campus for the Scarecrow angle, but near enough to Riverside Park if anything turned up there. Cassie was downtown for some Jervis targets but near the flower market. We covered as much as we could based on what we knew."

"What about Nightwing and Huntress?"

"What does it matter? None of us had a crystal ball. It happened."

"Yes, when I wasn't here."

"Well, that was bad luck."

"Bad luck? It was—"

"You know, like when the delivery guy knocks on the door three hours late, at the exact moment when you finally gave in and ran to the bathroom. That's just the way things work sometimes..."

Despite being a man who had a butler his whole life to answer a knocking door, Bruce conceded the point... if only to get back to the real issue.

"No well-laid plan can be derailed by 'luck,' there has to be a contingency—

"And we had one. That's why Nightwing was in the helicopter and Huntress was in the Batboat. So if he hit somewhere we didn't expect, we could get there fast. With the open space of the park, he could land and pick me up. We couldn't get to the kids, so 'Wing and I went in alone."

"_After_ the fact! Once Joker was already attacking civilians. Because no one thought enough ahead that a _flower show_ might be a prime target—"

"Including _you_, Bruce." There was a strange intensity in her response that caught him off-guard. "You'd been here just sixty minutes before this went down, and this flower show didn't spring up last minute. Hell, we both got an _invitation_ to the damn thing, it's sitting on the mantel right now. It wasn't on _your_ radar either. We missed it—we _ALL_ missed it. But 'Wing and I adapted and were able to get there in time."

Bruce stared at her a moment: the determined glare, the set jaw, and (worst of all) the flat out non-feline _logic_ of it. Had they been discussing anything but Joker-details, he could have kissed her right there on the transport pad.

"What exactly did he do? After what I heard on the com, after driving everybody inside to the 'bird cage' he had waiting for them. You said 'that's when he really got going with the Ivy thing.'"

"Yeah," Selina said meekly. "That's why I want you to remember that I love you. And even when we were enemies, I had a thing for you. I hate, loathe, despise him, everything he's ever done and everything he stands for."

"Selina—"

"So if just this once, I think there was a certain… poetry in what he did, don't hate me."

"POETRY?"

"Sublime, inspired, insightful poetry—"

"Selina—"

"Such as makes the angels weep, yes. Smiling Jack nailed it."

"What. Did. He. Do?" Batman asked through clenched teeth.

"Well first, he railed against the hostages for enslaving the flowers and pimping the flowers, exploiting the flowers, degrading the flowers… You get the idea, you've heard it enough times when she gets going."

Batman grunted, and Selina continued.

"So after that spot-on imitation, he noticed the paperwork: check-in forms, posters advertising the orchid show, signs with the admission price, that kind thing. None of the actual orchids in the show were dead, but all this paper meant dead trees, so they had a moment of silence, out of respect. At this point, I'd gotten the back of the cage open and was sneaking a few people out that way while Nightwing came in through the top. Meanwhile, for the moment of silence, Joker put on this green boxing glove and raised a gloved fist in the air." Selina demonstrated the move soberly and then added the unnecessary explanation "Plant Power."

Batman shook his head.

"After that, 'Wing cut his hole through the top of the cage and crashed in. Joker didn't seem surprised, until he saw it wasn't you. You're the one he wanted."

"Of course."

"And that's where the poetry comes in. Other than the plants, what would you say is Ivy's defining characteristic?"

Batman scowled for a moment, then said "Seduction is the obvious answer, but the prospect of Joker going down that road is not something you would describe as 'poetic.'"

"No," Selina smiled. "He observed that, stripped of all the bullshit, Pammy does the same thing as Scarecrow: they both rely on chemicals to achieve a desired effect that neither one can pull off very well on their own."

"No," Batman breathed, his mind leaping to the logical extension of the premise. "Is Dick alright? I know you said everyone was, but if he inhaled any of the SmileX at all, or—"

"He's fine, Bruce. He did snort a little—that's how Joker got away—but 'Wing popped the antidote, just like you taught him. Alfred's already taken a blood sample, everyone's on the SOP… How did you know?"

"About the SmileX? It's 'elementary.' Joker's take on a theme he describes as 'doing with chemicals what you're not too successful at otherwise,' and you said he was expecting me. What would Joker see as a worthy aim that he could achieve with chemicals and not any other way?"

"Making Batman laugh."

* * *

_"…hundred and sixty-one days since the former president declared all life on this planet would be extinguished by a Kryptonite meteor the size of Brazil. I'm Keith Olbermann. Good night and good luck." _

Poison Ivy switched off the television, her hand shaking.

He… he… JOKER! He… Orchids… the most lustrous and beautiful of babies… Dizzy… Breathing… or not breathing… the harder she breathed, the less air she seemed to have… The Orchid Society… It was the one place humanity actually behaved properly towards plants, cosseting them and pampering them. The orchids were revered and worshiped as nature intended at an orchid show… How could he… he…

Without being entirely sure how she got there, Ivy found herself on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. Her tailbone hurt and so did her head. As the seconds passed, she realized she'd fainted. Then the reality flooded in: she'd fainted because she hyperventilated because she'd seen that news report where JOKER, the obscenity of obscenities, the absolute worst specimen of the bestial human male, had gone to a FLOWER SHOW and attacked it, ranting about its _crimes against vegetation!_

Now, admittedly, Ivy had a few quibbles with orchid enthusiasts. They created a demand for increasingly—JOKER! JOKER AND HER ORCHIDS!

No… Breathe… Breathe in… Breathe deep… But not too deep… Air in… Air out…

Okay.

Orchid societies… demand for exotic blossoms… That led to higher prices… which led vile, greedy, smelly men to go tramping into the rainforests to obtain them. They were careful enough to bring the prized orchids back alive, but they always managed to kill other flora as they went…

Ivy climbed dizzily to her feet…

That general objection aside, she had issues with the Gotham Orchid Society as well. For one thing, there was that—OH WHAT DID IT MATTER! JOKER! JOKER AND THE FLOWERS. JOKER GETTING HIS DISGUSTING LAUGHING HYENA SPITTLE ALL OVER HER PRECIOUS FLOWERS!

She threw a planter into the television set, overturned a table, and hurled a bag of potting soil into a row of tulip bulbs she had only planted yesterday. She apologized at once, but the little mounds of dirt seemed to look up at her with an attitude that was not at all forgiving.

Again, she apologized. Again, she reminded herself to breathe.

"They call their refreshments tent the Persephone Pavilion," she told the rows of dirt contemptuously. "The only reason for anyone at a flower show to come up with a name like that is if they have a passing acquaintance with Greek mythology, right? Persephone was the Spring, Persephone was the rapturous flowering of nature's munificent bounty."

She righted the table and began picking up shards of terra cotta.

"Persephone's story is basically 'why we have winter,'" she told the nearest fichus. "Winter as in the time of year when the flowers DIE!"

She threw one of the shards at the television, and again she apologized—this time to the iris whose planter it was to have been.

"The Persephone myth is the first horror story. Dead plants and patriarchy. Persephone, goddess of green, is the ultimate victim. Forced to stay in the netherworld, away from the nourishing sunlight, and all because of the machinations of a so-called husband who KIDNAPPED HER, and because while she try tried really hard, she ATE something. Of all the idiotic fine print… specifically the seeds of a FRUIT, speaking of sick jokes…"

That word 'jokes' brought it all back again, and Ivy felt her fingers grow cold and her cheeks burn with rage.

Jokes.

Joker.

Regardless of her objection to the Gotham Orchid Society and their failure to change the name of that pavilion despite her six letters detailing its ideological implications, she would never, ever ATTACK an actual church of flowers right in the middle of their worship. The fact that that, that, that, that… CLOWN took it upon himself to turn his sick perversities on PLANT PEOPLE.

That was it, the last straw. Something snapped deep inside of her brain and everything suddenly became frighteningly still. She stood in the center of the room, her eyes internally blinded by white hot rage.

The flowers in the room began to quiver with intensity, and then, slowly, they began to sway back and forth, as if blown by a gentle, non-existent breeze. Large vines and roots suddenly punched up through the floor and started slithering and curling around her feet, splaying out across the floor, up the walls and over the ceiling. They writhed and undulated like a pit of vipers as they encased the room.

In the center of it all, Ivy stood perfectly still, save for the rhythmic heaving of her chest as she breathed in and out, slowly, methodically. In that one instant, everything snapped into focus—a crystal clarity that shone with a brilliance that drowned out even the blinding rage. And in the heart of that clarity, three simple words glittered like jewels:

**Joker**.

**Must**.

**Die**.

* * *

To be continued…


	7. HaHacienda

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 7: Ha-Hacienda

* * *

The low-rise area west of the theatre district was poised to be Gotham's next hotspot. Sprawling renovated lofts interspersed with charming historical walkups. The only condominium, Endicott Tower, was still unfinished and likely to remain so until Frank Endicott settled his dispute with Carmine Falcone or else found another source of concrete. Neither would happen overnight, so the area had time to find a neighborhood acronym that would give it the necessary cache. WesTheDi perhaps, although some residents favored EiToHu denoting the perimeter from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson where alpha residents would soon be strolling in the evenings, defining the neighborhood by their personal style.

Tonight, however, the tone was set by non-residents. The Batmobile crept quietly along Eighth Avenue, followed a few minutes later by a six-foot autonomous vine snaking its way to the intersection. After it disappeared, a lithe wisp of purple could be seen swinging gracefully along the same route as the Batmobile but traveling in the opposite direction.

_..:: Vine snake, ::.._ she reported on the OraCom.

_..:: Same one as before? ::.._ Batman asked, checking the rearview mirror to see if he could spot it.

_..:: You think I can tell them apart? It's leafy and it's slithering under a mailbox, what do you want from me?::.._

Batman grunted.

_..:: At least she hasn't found them, ::.._ Selina offered cheerily.

_..:: Neither have we, ::.._ Batman countered.

_..:: Woof. ::.._

The OraCom went silent for the next fifteen minutes, during which, PsychoBat seethed. When the situation with Catwoman first started to change, he allowed it only after he satisfied himself that each planned step would not impact his mission. Happiness for Bruce Wayne did not mean less Batman for Gotham. On the contrary, the improvements in his personal life seemed to infuse the mission with greater purpose. The realization that life is _good_ made the taking of it so much worse. Even crimes that didn't involve a death struck a deeper chord. The personal experience of a day-to-day existence that was… _pleasant_… To _ruin_ that for people, to insert hardship and headaches and fear into their lives, it made him want to punch the perpetrators harder than ever before.

So far, so good. Life with Selina meant happiness for Bruce Wayne, happiness for her (a development in which he took a particular pride), and a more centered and focused Batman for Gotham. So far, so good. So far, he could tolerate all that had happened. But now—

_..:: You're still mad? ::.._

_..:: No, ::.. _Bruce lied.

* * *

"Com's on the fritz," Robin said, landing on the fire escape where he usually hooked up with Batgirl at this time of night.

She nodded.

"Oracle say cell tower. Is new tower for phone by her building. Make interferity."

"Interference," Tim said with a smile, which then broke into a full laugh. "Interference from the cell tower? That's the excuse she came up with? That tower's been up for a month, why's it only causing problems tonight, hm? I'll tell you what it is. There's a new encryption matrix on channels one and nine, that's what's playing hell with the other channels. I'm going over Saturday and help her sort it out. You should come. Dick's making paella."

"Why? And no say why Dick make paella. Is dumb joke and no funny. Know what I mean. Why new channel encrypt?"

Tim made a face and looked across the rooftops to the neon glow of Chinatown. He took out his grapnel and fired a line.

"I'll tell you but it's a long story and I'd rather tell it moving. We can check on Ra's and get some spring rolls."

* * *

Once it became clear that Harley's contacting Selina was not part of Joker's plan, that it had nothing to do with Mad Hatter or Cheshire Cats, that Harley was effectively going behind Joker's back, Batman figured the address she gave for the meeting was an extra hacienda not currently in use. It would be worth checking—ANY lead was worth checking at this point—but he wasn't expecting to find anything.

Selina agreed that he wouldn't find Joker hunched over a worktable with a crate of explosives and a carton of beer hats, but she did worry that he might find something else. If Harley did use the empty haciendas for meetings she didn't want Joker to know about…

* * *

"Why smirk? What funny?" Cassie asked irritably.

Tim didn't think he was smirking, but he did feel his cheeks burn a little. He was a guy. And enemies or not, Ivy was a very hot woman and Harley was a crazy blonde bundle of energy. The idea of the two of them meeting in secret in some empty hacienda…

"STOP SMIRK AND TELL STORY," Cassie ordered.

Tim sighed. Nobody should have to put up with a girlfriend who could read body language that well. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair.

"Stupid Tim. If no will tell, will get story from Nightwing. Will tell Nightwing must ask him because you no can tell without stupid smirk."

"Okay, okay. Everyone knew Ivy would be on the war path after the orchid show. We had to figure the only reason she hadn't attacked him yet was the same reason we haven't arrested him: none of us know where he is. Ivy would be sure to go to any hacienda she knew about, and if she found it empty, she'd still be keeping an eye on it. Now, Selina's got this idea in her head that whenever Ivy wants to snuff someone on the most wanted list, Batman's her first call."

"Because Clayface."

"Right, that whole episode with her wanting to kill Clayface last year. Selina figured even if Ivy didn't have the idea to start with, if she's watching the hacienda and sees the Batmobile drive up: light bulb! There's B, delivering himself right into her line of sight, right within greening distance. So Cat figured there's only way to handle it…"

* * *

Alfred called it the "Joker walk." Whenever the madman was free, Bruce's step was a little more hurried whenever he approached the study. He didn't sprint or anything, but there was a touch more urgency in his step: across the great hall, down the hallway past the dining room, past the drawing room door, and turning into study. Dick and Tim knew the heightened movement also down in the cave. He'd make a beeline for Workstation 1 and check if there had been any new developments in the four to five hours he had been asleep. There would be a flicker of relief, nothing more, when no news reports were flagged. Then he would set the standard routines in motion: At Large list, traffic reports, weather forecasts and other pertinent information, all feeding into the Batmobile. He would tweak the subroutines—it was almost a nervous habit when Joker was free—Psychobat's subconscious check: if Joker was free and there was no news, it could be because they had missed something.

Once the subroutines were under way, he headed into the costume vault to change… and there, propped up against his right gauntlet, was a note the size of a business card: _"Gone ahead to the 41st Street hacienda. Catch up with you by 10. Meow"_

The whole world tilted, like the slanted loop of that "h" in "ahead." What was she doing? Gone ahead to the hacienda? What did that mean? Alone? What was she…

_Yes,_ Psychobat would later concede, bringing her into his life was the right move. "Happiness for Bruce Wayne did not mean less Batman for Gotham," et cetera, et cetera. And, so much of his life was crimefighting, it was natural that he wanted her to be a part it. But he'd always imagined it as her standing beside him on a rooftop before swinging into battle together or sifting through data in the cave—not FINDING A NOTE in that cave that she was _handling a dangerous operation without him_! Not pulling up to Joker's hacienda inside the armor of the Batmobile and seeing her stroll out, exposed and unprotected. Nothing but that thin leather costume to shield her, it made him feel _he_ was the one exposed and vulnerable.

It was something about her walk that sent that wave of dread through his system like that first breath of fear toxin, her walk as she saw the Batmobile and strode up to it, it was that Job Well Done Swagger. She looked like an action hero who'd just set a bomb in the villain's hideout, striding calm and determined towards the camera, never flinching as the building behind them explodes into an all-consuming fireball. A cliché, but an image so ingrained into the public psyche that Batman half-expected the hacienda to burst into a fiery explosion behind her.

* * *

"No get."

"Sure you do, Cass. That slow motion walk they do in all the movie trailers, that music from _Kill Bill_ blasting, then BOOM! FIREBALL! Zoom in for a close-up on the eyes, satisfied blink with little bits of shrapnel blowing past in slow motion behind them."

"Catwoman no blow up hacienda."

"No, I'm not sayin' she did. I'm just sayin' it looked like that."

"You no there. No can say how it look."

"Never mind," Tim said wearily.

* * *

"Empty, just like you thought," she said when she reached the car.

Batman didn't hear. That one moment of subconscious expectation had seared the fears into his mind, repressed fears building since she took those first tentative steps into crimefighting: her costume so thin, her hair exposed, not to mention her cavalier attitude… "I've got to get a set of Victor's frigid-field generators now for my boots," she had said. Still thinking like a cat burglar. Still thinking like a thief. When he said they couldn't use the hacienda location she got from Harley, what was her response? "No matter how many cameras or motion detectors they put up, no matter how many armed guards or biometric scanners or inches of reinforced titanium, there is always a way." It was "problem-solving" "like a vault."

"What did you think you were doing, coming here all alone?" he asked hoarsely. In his own ears, his voice was warped with rage, but Catwoman noticed nothing.

"I covered that in the note," she said lightly.

"No, you didn't."

"No? Well it was implied."

Her manner was infuriating. That lilt in her voice, the faux-innocence from a hundred open vaults. That lilt that, regardless of the actual words, said "Oh, am I not supposed to be in here?"

"It was not implied," Batman said coldly. "You said you'd 'gone ahead' to the hacienda, would catch up with me at 10 (if 'catch' was supposed to be a cat pun, there was no indication of that fact). Meow."

"I see," she sighed as if she expected that would be perfectly clear.

"Explain," he ordered.

"We don't scrap the rules for Joker, fine. But this is _Ivy_, and she comes with her own set of rules. You know she won't take that flower show lying down. She'll want to kill him, and we know her first stop when she wants to off somebody on Batman's most-wanted list."

The observation and insight that made Batman the world's greatest detective reached out and squashed his anger like swift fingers snuffing a flame. Her words might be light and careless, but there was a vulnerability behind them, one that had nothing to do with the lack of armor in her costume.

"Clayface," he said, reducing that nightmare episode to a single word.

"I can't go through it again, Bruce. You said it takes two weeks to build up enough anti-tox in your system, and if you run into her now—which is not, like, out of the realm of possibility seeing that you're both scouring the city looking for laughing boy—you've got nothing to resist her with."

It felt like that night in the bedroom, facing the music after he'd put her in a sleeper hold and cuffed her to a fire escape to keep her from following him. He had been so full of his own emotions, he hadn't stopped to consider hers. Whenever he went off to face the Joker, she felt the same way he did seeing her run into danger. This wasn't exactly the same thing, but like that night, he had been so caught up in his own feelings that he'd overlooked the obvious: Selina had feelings of her own.

"Don't worry about it," he said mildly. "Ivy isn't going to green me to help her kill Joker. The idea would never occur to her."

"It did with Clayface. And don't forget, she doesn't know she nearly succeeded there. As far as she's concerned, it was really Matt in disguise the whole time. If she knew she actually had you in her viney clutches—"

"This is different. Selina, listen to me, Ivy hates Joker. She _hates_ him, do you understand? It's a passion as potent and all-consuming as love. She'll want—she'll _need_—the complete visceral experience: to choke the life out of him with her bare hands. Even the plants won't get a piece of him, it wouldn't be… _satisfying_. Believe me, what she's planning right now is very personal, individual, intimate even. It's not a team sport."

Selina looked into his eyes for a long moment, and then nodded.

"Okay, well…" she said finally. "She's been here. There's flower shmutz on the back door, the kitchen floor and the door to the basement, and it might be my imagination, but I could swear I got a whiff of lemon pledge in the bedroom. She must've had the address from Harley same as we did, but the happy couple haven't been in there for quite some time."

"She'll be keeping an eye on it anyway," Batman graveled. "Just in case."

"And so will we?" Catwoman guessed.

He grunted. It was the only lead they had.

Two nights later, they added Sutton, NoLiTa, and a section of Cobble Hill to the list of possible hacienda neighborhoods, but they hadn't found any trace of Joker or Harley, and they always found signs that Ivy was searching as hard as they were.

Like now. The Batmobie had cruised across WesTheDi towards the river, a few minutes later, the vine snaked after it, and a few minutes after that, Catwoman swung through, patrolling the same route in the other direction.

_..:: Vine snake, ::.._ she reported on the OraCom.

_..:: Same one as before? ::.._ Batman asked, checking the rearview mirror to see if he could spot it.

_..:: You think I can tell them apart? It's leafy and it's slithering under a mailbox, what do you want from me?::.._

Batman grunted.

* * *

"No get."

"I know, Cass. Truth is, I don't get it either. If you or I had done it, we'd be benched 'til Christmas. Hell, we'd be benched 'til the day Jason Todd would've qualified for Medicare. But it's different for them. Catwoman's not a sidekick, she's… well, she's Catwoman. And she's on Channel 9. B is on Channel 1, they've been poking at each other all week, and Oracle punched in at the wrong moment and got caught in the middle. Hence the new encryption lockouts and all the interference."

"No get."

"No get," Robin echoed, lifting his spring roll and touching it to hers like it was a toast.

* * *

Catwoman joined Batman in the Batmobile for the drive out to Brooklyn. It wasn't that long a drive, but it was too far to go by whip-swing if she didn't have to.

It was nice. She didn't chatter like Robin when he was nervous or excited, but she broke the silence now and then. Suddenly, she pointed: in front of the library, a trio of vines had stopped in their tracks, almost as if they'd heard a noise or caught a scent. They twisted and writhed, and then changed direction.

"They must have found something," she breathed.

"I don't think so," Batman said. "They're not moving forward on their original path, they're not going back the way they came, and they're not moving any faster. It's more likely she's called them off."

"Called off the search? She'd only do that if she's found them."

"That's the most likely explanation," Batman agreed. He said nothing more until they were over the bridge. Then the car slowed and he pulled over.

"We're not going to keeping following?" Selina asked.

"I am. Alone."

"Now wait just a damn—"

"This isn't about safety, it's cover. Look where those vines are headed and play it through in a straight line, where does that path lead?"

"The Iceberg."

"Not the best place for you to be seen getting out of the Batmobile. Take the rooftop route and I'll see you there."

* * *

While Batman was fairly certain the vines were heading towards the Iceberg, he continued to follow them rather than racing ahead. It was a gamble—everything was a gamble where Joker was concerned—but if he acted on his assumption, if he went straight to the Iceberg and found nothing, he might not be able to locate the vines again once he doubled back. This way, if they led elsewhere, Catwoman was still headed for the 'Berg. If either Joker or Ivy was there without the other, she could handle it, while he handled wherever these snaking vines led. They moved slower than he would have liked, but simply by being vines they honed his focus while he mapped out a strategy:

Ivy… She was always dangerous, but never so much as when she was angry. When she was incensed, like now, she was at her most deadly—and not only to her target. To everyone around her. The angrier she got, her intended victim almost became safer in relation to everyone else. Of all the opponents Batman had fought, Ivy was the most ineffective in the grip of her own rage.

Trying to reason with her would be a waste of time. There was no calming her down once she committed to a course of action. While that made her doubly dangerous, it made her easy to fight. She became so singularly focused, all he had to do was interrupt her targeting system: put himself between her and the target, antagonize her with bluster and machismo, use batarangs, gas pellets and remotes to pull her focus. He would delay direct head-to-head combat as long as possible, giving her rage no physical outlet and keeping her off-balance with distractions and misdirection. Her frustration would build until, eventually, it would split her focus. Her single-minded "Must kill" would splinter into "GAH, you annoying shit! Get out of my way and let me do this." It would be expressed as an exasperated gasp, nothing more, but Batman knew from long experience how to recognize those non-verbal cues. In Ivy, the turning point was always an exasperated gasp. The moment he heard it, he'd know she was frazzled, about to get sloppy. With luck, he would have that achieved by the time Selina arrived. If not, Catwoman's appearance would certainly drive her over the edge.

That was the methodology. That's the strategy that was called for tonight: When they're that focused, distract them—and the easiest way to do that is to keep getting in their way and keeping them from their one all-consuming goal.

Meanwhile, the vines had reached _their_ goal: turning at the intersection that led to the Iceberg.

Although the street was unnaturally quiet…

No pedestrian traffic, few parked cars, no Talon or Crow on the door…

Batman went inside cautiously…

And continued to feel like he'd missed the rapture. No one in the entrance, no one at the coat check, no one at Raven's podium.

Then…

A lone figure sat at the only occupied table in the dining room—a figure in green, but not the green Batman expected. Edward Nigma sat, his fingers poised in a neat steeple pointing upward to the tip of his nose.

* * *

Catwoman's path to the Iceberg was more direct than the Batmobile's, but she veered off course when she spotted Zed, one of the lead Z, slinking down 11th towards the parking lot. Zed drew the short straw the one time Catwoman had contacted the Z to set up a lair. He went to meet her but Robin and Batgirl swung into action before they could even discuss animal print cozy vs high tech modern. Catwoman blamed him for leading teenage sidekicks to her door, and the only way Zed could clear himself was to account for every move he'd made since breakfast.

It told her everything she needed to know that night: about the Mad Hatter's unfolding plot, the agents he had in place and traps he had prepared—but it didn't make _tonight's_ little chat a happy prospect. Zed had very clear memories of those claws, and the unspeakable things she threatened to do with them. But in his near-hysterical ramblings and denials, Scarecrow's name was mentioned twice.

Selina sighed to herself. This was going to take a while—but cat burglar's instinct said there was a prize to be had. Curiosity and patience would be rewarded.

And it was a prize she could deliver that Batman would never… Well, technically Batman could get Zed to talk too, if he had found him. But his method would be all Bat, all crimefighter. Selina enjoyed playing Catwoman's reputation to bring Batman a prize from the Rogue side of the equation. She smiled at Zed, metaphorically rolled up her sleeves and literally cracked her knuckles… Whatever Batman found waiting for him at the Iceberg, he could certainly handle it solo.

* * *

_"Here we sit in the Iceberg Lounge,  
O. Cobblepot proprietor.  
What trait most distinct marks this Oswald P.  
Without which the night would have been quieter?"_

Batman scowled. And Riddler smiled.

"The meter isn't my best, I'll grant you, but I'm extemporizing. Sort of a sonnet-haiku-limerick. Not bad considering. I've only had a few minutes to compose it before—eeht." He gasped and gurgled as Batman pulled him from his seat, then resumed his gaming smile since Batman's move did lift him up where he could look his nemesis in the eye.

"Where are they?" Batman graveled.

"Answer mine and I'll answer yours, Caped Curmudgeon."

Batman let him drop back down to the chair.

"The absence of birds or umbrellas wouldn't make the night any quieter, nor would his nose, which is Cobblepot's most distinctive physical characteristic."

"Oh contraire, birds chirp," Eddie said in a chirpy voice of his own. "At least one of Ozzy's umbrellas fires bullets, and if he had a cold, his nose would—" Batman cut off these musings with a fierce kick at the table, which caused a sharp scraping sound but no movement. "But okay, you're right," Nigma continued. "It's none of those things. A good riddle should eschew the obvious, otherwise any dullard could just guess the answer without solving a thing. Birds and umbrellas are obvious, and no one would argue if you called that nose conspicuous."

"Greed," Batman said darkly.

"Kee-rect," Riddler beamed. "After Luthor, Oswald Cobblepot is the greediest character I ever met," he said, leaning back in his chair. The move was a taunt. _I fear no bats; I fear them not,_ it proclaimed. Batman glowered, which Eddie seemed to enjoy, and his tone became more expansive: a natural storyteller with a great yarn to spin. "Once Joker pulled the trigger on those homing pigeons, Ozzy didn't care so much about his theme-schemes. Not from a personal standpoint. Not once the birds were back in their coops. He reverted to type, started looking for ways to make a buck from the situation."

"Typical," Batman grunted.

"Ozzy's no fool. He knew Joker wasn't going to pay for anything, but Pammy—"

"Poison Ivy," Batman corrected.

"What's in a name? Would not that which we call a rose by any other word be a vicious, fanged flower that bites anyone who gets near it? Oswald knew Pammy'd be an easy touch. He let her know he could deliver Joker here at the Iceberg on any given night—for a fee.

"Asking for the dandelion treatment, in my opinion; she's greened men for less. But that's what Ozzy did, and somehow or other, he got away with it. Women are the ultimate riddle, Bats. She's greened men for doing nothing more than being a little crankly after a really bad fixup with a henchwench wannabe named Cluerissa. That's _Clue-rissa_! Couldn't you just gag? Being a little cranky after a bad double date and crossing her path when she's having a mood, _that_ gets you greened. But Ozzy gets away with shaking her down on this Joker thing."

It was no riddle to Batman. It was precisely the aspect of Poison Ivy's character he was banking on: her single-minded focus when riled.

"If you're not part of the problem, you're part of the solution," he explained. "Cobblepot was making himself part of the solution. It wouldn't occur to her to green him to avoid paying for the service." No more than it occurred to her to kill, unmask, or discredit Batman when she'd greened him the year before. Her focus then was to make him tell her how to kill Clayface, and until that was accomplished, she had no other thought in her head.

"Well anyway," Nigma resumed, "I don't know what she paid, but Ozzy got word to Joker that he was so impressed with the pigeon stunt that he was prepared to concede the victory. He wanted to honor Joker at a special ceremony, award him the Golden Feather of Distinguished Bird Roguery or what have you…"

* * *

Eddie had ordered another Glenondrumm and when it came, he persuaded Dove to sit with him. Of course that wasn't allowed, but who's expected to follow rules in a Rogue bar?

"Well, I wouldn't for just anyone," Dove said, settling into the seat beside him. "But seeing that it's you, Mr. Nigma…"

"Edward, please," he grinned.

"Mr. Cobblepot always says the Old Guard Rogues can have anything they want. Just make sure it goes on their tab."

Eddie didn't think clever wordplay about Dove "going on his tab" would be well received. She might get the double entendre, but if she did, it would make the implication that Oswald would charge for her all the more insulting. Instead, he regaled her with his favorite riddles and anagrams related to the words "Brinks Truck."

It was going well. Dove was a pretty thing, smarter than the average henchwench, much smarter than the average groupie—but not averse to spending time with theme rogues. Not looking down on theme criminals with some high and mighty chip on her shoulder just because the way she made her money was legal. She listened attentively as he broadened his theme, explaining that "cash in transit" actually anagrammed as "Sacristan Hint." If you weren't squeamish about leaving a riddle with a priest…

And that's when it happened: HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!

The smiles of a pretty woman and the mental diversion of the sacristan hints had driven the depression from his mind. Now, with that awful cackle, the blow fell anew. _Death by Stupidity._ The most fiendishly clever Riddler scheme in years, and he hadn't thought of it. HAHAHAHAHA, indeed. It wasn't funny. Not one bit.

Nasty shock for the Iceberg patrons, enjoying a nice glass of Glenondrumm, pretty girl listening so attentively, then that cackle—HAHAHAHA—Joker and Harley standing at Raven's podium, wanting to know when the party is starting.

* * *

"And Ivy was waiting," Batman prompted.

Eddie looked peevish at the interruption. He had paused for effect. A master storyteller trying to convey the monumentality of the moment.

"That's… really… lowballing it," he said at last. "She was _poised_… in Booth 3… by the door… None of us knew what was going on of course. I did notice she wasn't hiding behind that curtain of foliage at her usual table, but it didn't seem all that strange. She was sort of wandering around the dining room most of the night, but she's Pammy. She's odd. Certainly didn't seem like she was keeping an eye on the door. But once I heard that cackle, HAHAHAHAHA, I turned around and there she was: Booth 3, standing on the seat and just… poised… like one of those toy monkeys with the cymbals.

"I think she was supposed to be a flytrap, but the way she sprung at him, the hands closing in from both sides and this loud Xena war cry, it was more cymbal monkey than flytrap. Harley yelled something original like 'Red, no!' and that must've really stung like a bitch, because here she had Joker's head between her hands, and she lets him go to take a swing at Harley. Generally speaking, when Pammy's worked up, she's like a homing missile. But here, she lets go of her target with kind of an abbreviated nut-kick to take a wild swing at Harley.

"Joker says 'Nice diversion there, Harls' wherein Ivy swings right back around and pokes him in the teeth. I can only assume she was hoping to poke him in the eye, but instead, she hit dentine. Oh well… Harley cries 'Puddin'!' and Ivy swings back at her, Joker says 'Nyuk, nyuk,' and Ivy swings back at him. Some of us are thinking they could keep this going all night, or until Ivy gets dizzy, falls down and sees God."

Batman managed to control himself. Every Robin gave colorful and flippant reports like this in the beginning. He deliberately forced his mind into that mode: reading Dick's fanciful and undisciplined logs in the early days, rather than notice any similarities to Selina's method of giving a sitrep.

"So Joker nips at her—which isn't as crazy as it sounds when she keeps putting her finger in his face that way. She throttles—or tries to, but this time he knows it's coming and does that bouncy back and forth thing with his head. She takes another swing at Harley, Quinn ducks and Joker shoots a blast of (I guess) SmileX at her. That stuff doesn't work on Pammy but DOES piss her off big time. She shoots a few pheromones his way, which doesn't work on _him_ but – once again – pisses _her_ off even more. She grabbed his lapels and ordered her vines to wrap around his legs and make a wish. Harley is jumping up and down for her to stop and trying to hold back that monster flytrap she's got."

"Ivan," Batman said absently.

"Eh, y-yeah, what do you call a transportation app for the iPhone?" he said, merely as a mnemonic to remember the beast-plant's name.

"Go on," Batman ordered, but when the story resumed, there was a subtle change in the tempo, like Nigma was waiting for something.

"So Joker's got these snaking vines starting to spread his legs. Yells out 'Hey! Watch the giblets there, Queeny.' Harley's racing through the stages of grief. Denial: 'No, Red, no!' Anger: punching the flytrap fronds and calling it names. Despair: 'No, Red, no' again. And then she gets to bargaining. 'Red, listen, it doesn't have to be this way. If you didn't like Puddin's little take on your theme, _maybe you could have some fun with his_?'"

Nigma had been watching Batman's face intently, waiting for this moment. Now, as the meaning of those last words sunk in, he was not disappointed.

"The mind boggles, doesn't it?" he prompted. "Ivy's take on Joker, everyone move one theme to the right?"

But Batman offered nothing more than a silent glower as an insight to his thoughts.

"By this time, the rats were scuttling," Eddie went on. "I can't make it to the door without passing through the pheromone red zone, so I hid behind those champagne crates over there. Peeked through the crack, saw and heard everything that came next, after the place emptied out: Harley and the flytrap fighting it out for the big rubber mallet, Joker's still got vines wrapped around his ankles, new ones wrapping the arms while Ivy wraps her hands around his throat—and he's GIGGLING! Ivy's choking him hard, watching the life drain from those frantic little eyes, and in between the chokes and the struggles, _he's still giggling._

"'Hey, Harls, you're right,' he sputters—because at this point, Ivy's figured out her hands aren't big enough, and she tries to get one of the vines around his neck like a garrote. That lets him get out more words at a stretch. 'Come look at this, Harley. She's fuming so hard, she's practically emitting spores, HAHAHAHA-echt.' That last part when Pammy got the vine in place, obviously. Then it became a tug of war: he's got her wrists and she's got the end of the vines. He pries an opening to say a few words and she tightens them again. 'Just look at ha-ha-her_—eccht_' 'She's more than_—eccht—_funny_. _She's downright hysterical_—eccht.' _'You always told me she couldn't tell a joke-HAHAHA-ACHT.' 'You said she takes herself too seriously for_—eccht_—You mean she's not even trying? She is a NATURAL HAHAHA_—eccht_ TALENT.'

"Harley and the flytrap are still wrestling for the giant rubber mallet. They've got it high in the air, and I have no idea who had the better grip. I don't think they knew either, but they were mutually moving towards Ivy and Joker, and sooner or later, that thing was coming down.

"'Why it's astounding, HAHAHA_—eccht,' _from Joker. 'That funny without trying? It's astounding, it's amazing, it's, it's… it's HOT!' … And he kissed her. Ivy screamed. Harley screamed. The mallet came down. Ivy and the plant went one way, Harley and Joker went the other, and I stayed safely behind those crates until it got quiet again."

"Why did you stay?" Batman asked darkly.

Riddler smiled, walked back towards the champagne crates, and retrieved a bottle and a glass.

"Join me?" he offered.

"Why did you stay?" Batman repeated.

"Second verse, same as the first, eh?" he quipped, pouring an inch of liquid into his glass. "Tidy wish day. Why did I stay? Maybe I've embellished a few details," he said, sipping. "It's possible. Maybe Ozzy decided there was more money to be made. Ivy versus Joker, there's mondo betting-pool potential there… It's possible. Maybe Oswald Cobblepot's greed decided that offering Joker-on-a-platter to Ivy wasn't enough, not when he could set it up like a prize fight. Not when he had a monopoly on the action. That, Bats, is very, very possible.

"Of course, knowing what a brawl on that scale could lead to, there's no way he'd want that kind of property damage here in the Iceberg. He'd have to find somewhere else for the fight. However, knowing the way word gets around in this town, and since all Rogue roads lead back to the 'Berg, someone would have to stay behind… to make sure that the straggling bettors—er, _patrons_, that is—make it to the fight. And on top of all that, there was you, Bats. Whoever stayed behind had to be someone who could delay the Bat long enough for the fight to take place and conclude. No need to let someone like you ruin a perfectly good money-making venture like the fight of the century."

"And they elected YOU to delay me?" Batman sneered.

"Did it work?"

* * *

Catwoman entered the Iceberg just in time to see Batman's punch hurl Eddie across four tables to land at her feet in a dazed heap.

"Can't leave you two alone for a minute," she muttered.

"It was a joke, it was a joke" Nigma said mechanically as he got to his feet. "There she is. Just passing the time waiting for you, puss-puss."

"Puss puss?" Selina said. "How hard did you hit him?"

"Not to worry, Bats," Riddler grinned, "It all happened just like I told you. The vines, the giblets, the stages of grief, the kiss and the mallet. I was hiding behind those champagne crates, heard the whole thing."

"The stages of grief, the _kiss_ and the _mallet_?" Selina mouthed, thinking that even for an Iceberg tale, she might not want to know the details on this one.

"Then WHY did you STAY?" Batman asked, punctuating each word with a blast of Psychbat venom.

"Why did I stay to talk to you when I could have been safe out the door an hour ago? What's my usual reason, Bats? To ask a question, of course"

He looked happily from Batman's scowl to Selina's puzzled frown.

"In case you two haven't noticed," he said, "Joker's taking other people's themes out for a joy ride. My question to you both is this: 'What are you planning to do when he gets to Hugo?'"

* * *

To be continued…


	8. Don't Fear the Batman

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 8: Don't Fear the Batman

* * *

Even on "date nights," it was unusual for Catwoman to ride home with Batman in the Batmobile. They preferred to spend the night at the penthouse, and the next day Selina would change into civvies and take her own car back to the manor while Bruce made an appearance at WE. They would reach the penthouse by rooftop, by Batline and whip, not by car. It was the terrace, not the cave. Stripping off her costume and tempting Bruce to join her for a hot bath rather than crawling straight into bed. It was a delicious throwback to her old life, returning to her apartment after a prowl, landing on a high rise terrace… No Whiskers and Nutmeg to greet her, but there were other compensations. She had a much higher success rate tempting Bruce to postpone the logs than she ever had persuading Batman to put the crimefighter shtick aside for a few hours and give in to what they both wanted.

Tonight, of course, things were very different. They had left the Iceberg separately. Ten minutes later, the Batmobile stopped at an alley near the MoMA and Catwoman quietly got in. They rode back to the manor in near silence. Arriving in the cave, Batman went straight for the logs. Selina went to the costume vault and removed her gloves, mask, and whip. When she was on her own, she entered through the bedroom window, never through the cave, so there was no kimono waiting for her to change into. Instead, she ran her fingers over Bruce's, a soft smile curling her lips… black and slate gray silk woven in a tight herringbone pattern with black piping… he was still using it. She slowly folded her gloves, lost in thought, and lay them on the shelf next to his extra gauntlets. The whip she stored on a lower shelf next to the specialty utility belts, then she went back to the main cavern.

Batman sensed that something was off. She would usually make some cocoa on the Bunsen burner and begin rubbing his shoulders when she thought he'd spent enough time on the logs. Tonight, she was just hanging around. It wasn't hard to guess what was on her mind.

"Going to ask?" he said finally, without turning to face her.

"Do we have a plan?"

"Hugo Strange doesn't have a costume or a theme," he declared.

"He has a psychotic obsession with the notion of Bruce Wayne being Batman. It may not be raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but it's close enough to a theme that he gets to hang around the Iceberg and call himself a Rogue. Textbook definition or not, it's seriously bad news."

"Only because you know it's true. Remove that knowledge from the equation, is there anything at all about Hugo Strange that would attract Joker's attention?"

Selina had to think about that, and Batman turned around finally to face her.

"This is where I'm supposed to say there's nothing about Hugo Strange that would attract anyone at any time by any stretch of the imagination," she noted. "I'm sorry, Bruce, I don't have that kind of sass in me at the moment. It's _Joker_, who knows what the hell might pique his interest. All he has to do is wonder how a Groucho Marx mustache would look with those Coke bottle glasses and we're screwed. And P.S. Hugo does have a costume, technically. He wears _yours_, and it's seriously disgusting. And it's not like Joker doesn't have a passing interest in all things Batman, not to mention his creepy fascination with 'Brucie.' How can you possibly not be worried about this?"

"Because Joker's interest is in very literal themes: birds, plants, hats. It is extremely improbable that he'll turn his attention to Hugo. That's why I'm not worried about it—"

"But—"

"That does not mean I'm not prepared for the unlikely possibility."

"…"

While Selina gaped, Bruce removed his cowl.

"Kitten, do you really think I needed a hint from Edward Nigma to prepare for the possibility that one day Joker might take an interest in Bruce Wayne?"

"You have a protocol," she breathed.

"I have fourteen protocols—up from seven since you moved into the manor—three of which are adaptable to the present circumstances."

"Were you ever going to let me in on them?" Selina asked.

Bruce shook his head slowly.

"This aspect of crimefighting, you don't want in your head."

He thought it was a pretty ominous declaration—true, but ominous. Anticipating the worst case scenarios for villains like Joker, Ra's al Ghul, Luthor, and Brainiac was not a pleasant exercise, and not something he would ever want to darken Selina's vibrant personality—but however true it was, it was the kind of declaration he would have expected her to poke fun at. Instead, her eyes grew wide and she assumed a satisfied feline smile.

"I nearly forgot ZED!" she cried, nearly giddy with excitement. "I found one of the Z on my way home. He spilled his guts. Bruce, I know where the newest hacienda is!"

* * *

Catwoman would not be a part of face-to-face Rogue confrontations of this sort. That's what they agreed in the beginning. She took her Lamborghini (which everyone but Batman and Riddler called the Catmobile) to a spot within a half-mile of the address. She parked and went the rest of the way on foot. She wondered if perhaps the Bat-tracker was in her boot. She knew Batman had slipped it onto her somewhere, but he refused to tell her where it was (the jackass).

When she reached the location, she waited in the bushes outside and used her telescopic lenses to peer through the window. It was one of the many cases where she preferred her tools for the ones Batman developed for the same purpose. All that voice-command nonsense to activate nightvision where all she had to do was touch a button…

She could see inside the hacienda, and from the looks of things, it was going to be an anti-climactic fight. She couldn't see Joker, but Harley was running around—or _hopping_ around, actually—_hurried_ _limping _would be a fair word for it. It looked like she was bringing ice packs, bandages and salves to someone lying on a sofa, out of view of the window, while also trying to patch up herself. The scatterbrained tassel twit—

While a part of her surveyed the human drama, a part of her mind—like that of any thief—began mapping out a floorplan of the room and hypothesizing about the areas beyond, which she couldn't see but were hinted at by the placement of doors, stairs, and windows. She was sufficiently occupied with this process that she didn't sense the figure behind her until the blur of a cloth crossed one of her lenses before clamping down over her mouth.

Unlike the heroine of pulp novels jumped by mysterious men wielding rags soaked with chloroform, she didn't indulge in any muffled "MMMPHs." She merely planted her elbow in her attacker's gut—noting the distinctive texture and resistance of straw—and bent her knees for leverage to flip him over her shoulder. The move worked, but… despite the lack of chloroform fumes… her head was spinning.

"Fear," a Scarecrow-shaped blur said, lifting himself off the ground, "it's universal, uniting all men, and yet so wonderfully individual. The spider that paralyzes one in terror, another will squash with their shoe…"

"Fuck," Catwoman breathed, trying to steady herself on… a bush, presumably… but the shape of the thing kept shifting and it seemed to be... growing teeth. "That wasn't chloroform… what the fuck was that stuff?"

"I think you can guess, Kitty. Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand will respond to fear by cowering in a corner, whimpering and simpering, or else running. But the rare one in a thousand overcompensates," he said, his eyes gleaming with psychotic fervor. "They become aggressive. Not for them sobbing passively in a corner while the fearsome beast comes to devour them. They channel their fear into violent rage!"

Scarecrow grabbed Catwoman by the lower jaw and pinched her cheeks in his long, spindly fingers, like an exaggerated skeleton about to bestow a kiss.

"My new formula evokes this response. I intended it for Harley, but your claws present a far better instrument for my purpose. Joker, as you may know, has an annoying immunity to toxins. A side-effect of whatever made him that color. I require a sample of his blood to formulate a toxin that will work on him, for that accursed clown WILL KNOW FEAR!"

"J-J-J-Jonathan," Selina managed weakly.

"Yes, that would be the sort of fear I am speaking of," he grinned wickedly. "That heating of the blood, racing of the heart, pounding in the veins, that squeezing of the lungs suffocating in dread, straining for breath and gasping for relief that won't come. The only escape is to strike out at the terror—and then, my dear Catwoman, _return here with its blood on your claws._"

* * *

Even A-list Rogues like Joker were not terribly original with perimeter defenses. Batman had no trouble evading the electric eye, the trap door, or the banana peel. He entered through an upstairs window and followed the sounds of movement down to the kitchen. He had readied a gas pellet for the hyenas but found them already snoring. That was odd. Troubling. He exchanged the gas pellet for a batarang and advanced with caution—for exactly four steps, until the sound of a high-pitched scream tore through the silence. There was no time for caution when someone was in danger. Batman raced ahead, as several more cries, loud thuds, a whip crack, a Joker cackle and a crash of broken glass spurred him forward.

A lifetime of nights spent in combat mode with Gotham's theme rogues registered the whip crack as a possible Catwoman presence, it registered as empty tactical data without emotional context—until he rounded the corner and saw the wild flashes of purple, whipping Harley around as if in some violent dance before sending her spiraling into some kind of hassock near Batman's feet.

"STAY PUT!" he ordered, to which Quinn only replied with a shell-shocked "Owwww" and rubbed her tailbone.

"YOU!" Catwoman growled—the tasseled interference dispensed with, she had been ready to resume her attack on Joker until she heard that voice. "YOU DID THIS TO ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

She went airborne, sailing towards Batman, aiming to plant her feet in the center of his chest. It was an easy move to defend when you saw it coming, and Batman deftly shifted to the side and tipped her legs at the critical moment, sending her past him and towards a floor lamp near Harley.

"We didn't do nuthin' with cats, we didn't do nothing with cats," Harley mumbled frantically as she crawled for cover towards the sofa. Joker merely coughed, the new throttling from Catwoman having aggravated the previous attack from Ivy.

"DO YOU THINK I'M A FOOL?" Catwoman cried, charging at Batman again, while Joker gestured wildly at the floor, hacking and gasping but unable to speak, and Harley looked around feverishly for whatever he wanted.

"Catwoman, calm down," was unlikely produce an effect, but Batman found himself murmuring the idiotic words anyway. The "look at my empty hands" gesture was a particularly bad move, considering that his palm still held a batarang—which Catwoman ferociously knocked from his hand.

"DID YOU THINK I WOULDN'T CATCH ON?"

Still crawling on the ground, Harley found a red box where her Puddin' was pointing.

"DID YOU? AFTER THE SPAWN FOR CHRIST'S SAKE?"

It was the First Aid kit.

"YOU THINK I'M GULLIBLE? YOU THINK I'M THAT DUMB?"

She handed it to her Puddin', who opened it hurriedly and pulled out a vuvuzela.

"COMPARED TO THAT ASININE THIRD WORLD PLAYBOY BUNNY—"

He tried blowing on it, but since he couldn't summon the breath to speak, he couldn't get a respectable sound from it and handed it off to Harley.

"—THAT DISCOUNT BIN DISPOSABLE BOND GIRL THAT MAKES HARLEY LOOK LIKE GLORIA STEINEM!"

Harley had plenty of breath to blow the vuvuzela, but the bold burr she had going dwindled to a confused toot when she heard her name. "What's that supposed ta mean? Puddin', what does she mean by that?" she sputtered.

Catwoman resorted to an old move, lashing her whip wide at a sweet spot behind Batman's bulk, causing the recoil to entwine him around the shoulders or waist—when it worked. But in her toxin-induced rage, the strike went wild and hit the utility belt, releasing a cloud of black smoke meant to cloak him for costume changes or quick exits. The already tense and confusing scene erupted into full-fledged chaos as billows of the thick foggy smoke began filling the room.

Harley, seeing the black cloud wafting their way and hearing Mistah J still hacking and coughing on the floor beside her, lifted the vuvuzela to her mouth and began to frantically blow in huge puffs, trying to keep the smoke at bay. Joker managed to giggle something about "Bat Farts" and waved a hand in front of his face.

Catwoman, upon seeing her intended target vanish into a cloud of black mist, flicked back on the whip, bringing the tail back for another strike. She intended to lash at the smoke, knowing Batman must be in there somewhere—but she suddenly froze. In a choice of targets between an amorphous blob of smoke and the goose-honks coming from Harley and that infernal plastic tube-trumpet, the call of the anemic water-fowl won out. With a hiss of outraged felinity, she redirected the whip towards the noise, snapping the horn away from Harley's lips with a final "Frrrpp."

Batman knew he had to gain control of the scene quickly. He flicked a batarang at the light fixture, shattering the only remaining light in the room. The ensuing darkness allowed Joker and Harley to escape, but it also accomplished the more important goal: enabling him to approach Catwoman unseen. Capturing her was the first priority…

He would spend an hour later trying to convince himself it was because she might say something compromising in her delusional state, but even PsychoBat wasn't buying that one. At the moment, however, there was no conscious thought. There was simply what had to be done. He had to _catch_ her, he had to _sedate_ her, he had to _confirm_ what was doing this to her—fear toxin, most likely, but it was an atypical reaction—and he had to administer an antidote.

The first step was the hardest. The tactic of using an opponent's emotion against them in a fight is highly variable. For some, like Ivy, it creates blind spots and leads to error. For others—others like Catwoman—it sharpens their focus and boosts their strength and endurance far beyond what their physicality could achieve alone. Catwoman was a formidable opponent at the best of times. Driven as she was now, she was a force of nature.

"Infrareds, engage," he said quietly.

"YOU!"

But not softly enough—the lenses engaged just in time to see the clawed fist coming at him. He blocked and countered—a reflex which put more poundage-per-inch behind the blow than he would normally use with her. The force of the impact on his fist and the sound of that meaty squelch mixed with the feminine grunt was… it was…

She crumpled and he caught her.

But it wasn't a sensation Batman was prepared for. That familiar sting of the impact on his fist and the meaty squelch that same second, the meaty squelch of flesh on the other side of the hit, that he knew, that was mother's milk to Batman—more natural and familiar even, the sharp sting of the impact and that meaty squelch, the give of the other body—it was like breathing to Batman. But that grunt—that little involuntary sound of air pushed through vocal chords at the moment of impact—sometimes but not always followed by an intentional cry of pain or defeated moan… That he wasn't prepared for. Not in that voice. Not her voice. Not making those sounds that were so… so evocative of other sounds… other responses that he…

Something switched off inside. Bruce Wayne simply… left.

He got her into the Batmobile, back to the Cave, drew a blood sample and administered an antidote… He did these things as a set of movements, tasks and behaviors that might have been programmed into a Batman robot. He wasn't on autopilot, he wasn't in a daze, he was simply a composite of Batman's knowledge, skills, and physical capabilities without a human person at the core.

He carried Selina upstairs, removed her costume, and tucked her into bed. He returned to the cave and typed up the log. He went to the costume vault, removed his cape and cowl, his gloves and boots, his belt, tunic and leggings. He reached for the kimono…

At that moment, Bruce Wayne returned.

The kimono was a gift from Selina, after she moved into the manor and saw the details of his day-to-day (and night-to-night) routine. She said it was silly to go to all that trouble changing into Bruce Wayne's shirt and trousers when he got home from patrol just to walk upstairs to the bedroom, where he'd get undressed again anyway. It unnerved him at the time. It was a gift for Batman, not Bruce Wayne—a gift that showed an intimate understanding of Batman's life, of the most private aspects of Batman's life—and yet had no practical value in relation to the mission. The idea of BATMAN and not Bruce Wayne having a life unrelated to the mission, it seemed nonsensical. Yet there it was, in the form of a very tasteful herringbone of black and gray silk.

Psychobat reeled at the thoughts racing through his mind. He was aware "Bruce had left," so to speak, which he had viewed as _ discipline_. A welcome freedom from distraction which he seldom enjoyed where Selina Kyle was concerned. He was able to treat her medically, unfettered by other considerations, and write up the log with dispassionate neutrality. Only now, with the significance of that kimono quivering on the edge of his fingers, did he realize it wasn't discipline. Bruce didn't "leave" because Batman needed to focus without his feelings getting in the way. He did not leave out of weakness either. It was not pain or confusion or doubt that drove him, it was… contempt. He had left in exasperated disgust, the same way he'd walked out of the boardroom when Daniels wanted to finance the Eikesbury project with laundered Falcone money through Gotham National Bank!

A few minutes later, wearing the kimono, he entered the bedroom. He took Selina's hand and ran his finger gently over her knuckles as she slept.

* * *

Bruce was up long before Selina. He went straight to the cave and left instructions for Alfred to call him as soon as she was awake. He was surprised when she came down to the cave herself.

"Honey, I'm home," she said, reviving her joke from the weeks he was laid up in the cave and she went out crimefighting in his place.

He turned, startled. Nothing about her appearance matched the forced cheer in her voice, but it was consistent with everything Bruce knew about a fear-toxin hangover. The puffiness around her eyes, sallow gray of her skin, sag of her shoulders as she stood, and subtle hesitance of her gait as she walked. She held a mug steaming with a strange herbal concoction. Alfred's special remedy. Bruce could only hope he'd made some improvements since the last attempt.

"You shouldn't be out of bed," he said awkwardly.

"Right, because it's so much more rewarding to lie there hugging your knees all day after one of those fear gas episodes, ruminating on all the subtle nuances of your nightmare and deconstructing all disturbing insights that have been unveiled. Pfft, it was a bad head trip, let's move on."

"But physically..."

For a moment, it seemed like the word alone churned the twenty-pound mass of "bleh" in her stomach, for her already-pale complexion deepened from grey to a grayish green.

She stubbornly refused to acknowledge it, offering only a mild "pfffft" that Bruce interpreted as "You just had to bring that up, didn't you, jackass." She took a deep breath and her color returned, as did the overly-cheery smile.

"I see, you want to 'throw it in the closet.'"

"It works for me."

Bruce was skeptical. It was the Selina of many years ago talking, the one who had that hellmouth of a closet in her apartment, in all of her cat lairs, and shortly after she moved in, had recreated one at the manor. The Selina who said "I'm not good at introspection. Bad things happen when I try it." The Selina who tossed whatever she didn't want to think about—like being attracted to an enemy or the fact that stealing was wrong—into the mental equivalent of that hellmouth closet: out of sight, out of mind.

She had grown so much since then. When she first started crimefighting, when Riddler found out about it and threatened her with a fear trap, they had talked about this very possibility. That night she realized the benefits of self-knowledge: figuring out what your worst fears are so they can't be sprung on you unexpectedly. Those Scarecrow episodes were bad enough without the potential to reveal your innermost fears to an enemy when you weren't aware of them yourself.

That night she was open to talking about it; now she was back to "the closet." From the things she'd said at the hacienda, it was clear the triggered fear was not one she had expected. She had speculated it would be loss: losing him, the home they shared, the love they shared, and her cats (another man might have been confused by the inclusion of the last, but Bruce understood that, for Selina, they were all facets of the same thing). Her second guess had been that, whatever toxin-induced nightmare unfolded, the Justice League would be involved. That one did confuse him a little. Although Selina liked Clark, Arthur, J'onn, Wally, Kyle and others individually, as soon as they became a group, they were a collective of arrogant capes whose existence had to be tolerated, like pollution, as the price of living in the modern world.

None of that fit what she said at the hacienda. "Do you think I'm a fool?" "Did you think I wouldn't catch on?" and that ominous "You did this to me." It was possible she didn't mean _Batman_. He'd been gripped by fear toxin and he knew she could have been seeing anything from a killer robot to a giant sea turtle when she spoke those words. But then there were those references to The Spawn. Talia al Ghul. Not something she'd bring up with a sea turtle. Much as he disliked the idea, he was forced to conclude that he was the real object of her fear.

She didn't want to talk about it. Fine. Bruce was starting to think he didn't want to talk about it either. He didn't want to let it fester, he didn't think that was prudent, but… "YOU DID THIS TO ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH!" …Maybe tossing it in the closet was for the best.

* * *

To be continued…


	9. Don't Fear the Catwoman

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 9: Don't Fear the Catwoman

* * *

Now this was my idea of a date night. The condos at 10 West End Avenue had dramatic river views, and there's no better way to enjoy those than from your own private balcony. I should know, I had a wonderful balcony like that at my old place overlooking the park, so I know just how easy they are to land on. It's like they're made for the purpose. Meow.

The 25th floor was conveniently located only two stories below the roof, making for a purrfectly simple descent to 25-C. The penthouse was more desirable real estate, naturally, but whatever the owner's net worth, it held no interest. It was 25-C that brought me out tonight, the home of Carlos Mariopoulos, famed restaurateur who recently paid $198,000 for a bottle of Madeira presented to General Franco on the day he was made commander of the Spanish Army. That particular vintage was transferred to the Spanish mainland and bottled there, given the name of the ship that brought it: León, the lion. In place of a label, the word and a striking picture of a lion was applied to the bottle in gold leaf.

A Cat Prize. A really Catworthy Cat Prize to mark Catwoman's return to crime.

The balcony door was no obstacle, they never are. I could have picked the lock, natch, but in celebration of the night, I went for a signature move, something uniquely me. Positioned my fingers just so at a given point at the edge of the glass, making a five point outline around an invisible circle. Little twist… little twist… and one more little twist… and the claws cut me an almost perfectly round hole in the glass. I reached in to unlatch the door—and there is no describing the thrill. There I was, stealing again. It didn't matter that the door was easy or that reaching the keypad would be easier still. What mattered was the penetration. It was Mariopoulos's home, and I was not invited. He was in Vegas for another week, opening up a new restaurant, and while he was gone, I was using all my skills to break into his home and relieve him of that bottle of Madeira. Meow-meow-meow-meow-meow!

But before I could get to the bottle, I had to deal with the electric eyes. There was a very simple route to the keypad control panel, no whipline or vaulting gymnastics required. All I had to do was walking over the furniture. It reminded me of the stunt during Cat-Tales when I'd move through the audience at the Hijinx Playhouse by walking on the arm rests. Chair to sofa to dining table to the front entrance where the keypad was located, right inside the front door like a light switch.

I would have attached the DCC—nifty little device I came up with that doesn't really crack a password as much as it resends the last transmission from the input pad to the receptors, so it works equally well for fingerprints and retinal scans as for numeric pins—except in this case, it looked like it wouldn't be necessary. There was a square of masking tape on the side of the keypad with the PIN actually written on it in magic marker. Now, that kind of thing can be a trick (people who buy alarms of this type like to think they're clever), but most often it's a convenience for maids, nannies or baby sitters. I decided to roll the dice and used the number given… 8-8-3-1… and the red light switched to green. The electric eyes disarmed and all was right with the world. I made my way to the display case where the bottle sat in a place of honor.

And then came the voice…

"STOP RIGHT THERE, CATWOMAN!"

There is no way, not in a thousand years, I can explain the… the _vibrations_ that voice evokes in me. In my core. In my chest. Between my legs. Between my ears. He's so indescribably, deliciously, other-worldishly _BATMAN_. It was all I could do to keep from tossing my head back and laughing at the giddy thrill of it. I had such butterflies. My heart pounded, and I think, in a way, my ears were ringing—but not really. Not that actual sound, but more the… oh hell, I can't describe it, but I was high on it. I was high on the first real hit of pure, mainline Batman that I'd had in quite some time.

I turned as if concealing my surprise in an effusive smile. Once upon a time I would have wondered how he managed to get in without my hearing him. Now of course, it's a given: _How does he get in? He's Batman. What is there to wonder about?_ So I had to fake my surprise, and then fake covering it.

"That's far enough," he said with that dangerous edge in his voice. Time was those three little words in that oh-so-dangerous gravel kept me "purring" for a month, if you know what I mean.

"As a matter of fact, it is," I said in the sultriest purr I could manage (because I like to think my purrs were the same for him as his gravels were for me back in the day: a warm sense memory for later. Meow). I reached out to touch the bottle as I spoke. "See, just far enough," I noted, letting my fingers curl gently around the neck.

"It's not yours," he said. (Don't you love crimefighters when they state the obvious? They're SO CUTE!)

"Wasn't," I said, just as the weight of the bottle shifted from the shelf to my hand. "It is now."

"Put it back."

"Make me," I laughed. And I ran to the balcony, snatching the bat-rope he'd left dangling there. Rather than use it—which I've done before and I hate repeating that way if I can help it—I sliced it with a claw as I vaulted over the side. I lashed a railing a few floors down and then turned to see if the trick worked, delaying his pursuit. It had, so I waved—and had to dodge a batarang for my trouble. Jackass.

"HEY, don't go nicking my prize!" I called back—because it is GLASS after all. In my experience, Bats is a little off-hand about that sort of thing. He once chipped the ear off a clay Bast I was taking.

Anyway, I knew I wouldn't get far before I had company. He wouldn't be Batman if he gave up after a little outmaneuvering with the batline. I knew he was back there, and I knew he was watching, so I showed off a little. I sprang and twisted, I leapt and soared. From rooftop to fire escape to alley to roof, it was a wonderful chase. And it only got better when he closed the distance.

Our fights have never been soft, but the fact is there are many ways to counter a given hold, and if one of them lets me press my body against his for a split second longer, I'll do it. I push into a hold, accepting it, and giving him—just for that brief instant—nothing to fight against, and then I'll use the momentum to break free. It's the way I've always fought him, and tonight was no different: letting my knee bend around his leg and drawing my calf across it…

"Stop," he breathed.

"Make me," I repeated.

Hands are good too, when it comes to incidental contact. He likes my hands snaking around his belt, he always has…

"No more, this ends tonight." That with a grab at my hand holding the bottle.

…Around the belt or anywhere near the emblem. But that was for later. Not now, not during the fight. After another chase, after he caught up with me a second time…

"Let go," I cried—which wasn't the best line for a feline seductress, but his grab half-missed and he got the center of my forearm instead of my hand or wrist. Concern for the bottle blotted out other considerations for a moment. I felt my fingers opening, and I only realized as he took the bottle that he somehow made it happen. Pressure points on my forearm, most likely.

I hissed, but that's never once deterred him. He pulled me in tighter, pulled my arm taut and away from our bodies, and his free hand was slipping around my waist and came to rest on the small of my back.

"No prize for you tonight. And no escape either."

Once again, I pushed into the pin rather than fighting it.

"You don't mean that," I breathed, pressing my chest into his and stretching up so our lips nearly touched.

"No… No escape."

"Those mean two different things," I whispered—the words themselves are meaningless at this point. Every word spoken is a tickle of my breath on his lips, and vice versa. "'No' means you didn't mean it and I escape… 'No escape' means—"

I didn't get any farther. His control faltered and he nipped at my lower lip. It was the opening I needed, his focus and balance tipped, and all I had to do was ram my free hand into his chin to break free.

Except I didn't.

Somehow I just didn't.

I tipped my head back and let his lip-nips continue as soft nibbling down my neck.

PsychoBat came to my rescue. He broke the kiss, pushed me away, and before he could bark out that "Enough," my inner-Cat rallied. I took a claw swipe at his chin with a "No!" at the same second as his "Enough!"

Our eyes locked in a moment of shared fury, then I gave a wicked grin and leapt from the roof.

* * *

"I see, you want to 'throw it in the closet,'" Bruce had said.

"It works for me," Selina answered. Then her eyes flickered to his workstation while Bruce silently questioned the accuracy of the claim. "So what are you doing down here?" she asked finally.

He welcomed the change of subject and transferred a number of images to the large viewscreen: crime scene photos, newspaper headlines, and security footage relating to Joker's takes on Scarecrow, Penguin, Two-Face, Riddler, and Poison Ivy.

"Looking for a way to end it," he said, his voice deepening and his body seeming to grow denser as he spoke. Though he wore a simple black polo shirt and slacks, it was unmistakably Batman who now stood in the center of the cave. "So far we've done nothing but react, with the result that he's been five steps ahead of us at every turn. The only way to stop him is to get there first, to know where he's going to strike before he gets there and have a trap prepared."

"That would be ideal," Selina agreed. "But you've said a thousand times it's not that simple, that Joker is just too crazy to anticipate."

"That's right. Anticipating him isn't an option. We have to be more proactive than that: actually choosing a target ourselves and manipulating him into picking it."

"Manipulate him? Lead _Joker_ by the nose?" Selina laughed derisively. "You want fries with that?"

"Oh, it's not difficult," Bruce said grimly. "His insanity makes him all-but-impossible to _predict_, but very easy to manipulate. His obsession with Batman, for instance, and—"

"If it's so easy, why are we only getting to it now? He's been carrying on for _weeks_, and you're telling me we could've just clicked our heels together and sent him back to Kansas all along?"

"I said it would be easy, I didn't say it would be safe. Until your ordeal with Scarecrow, I didn't think anything could develop that justified the risk—not even the prospect of 'Rogue War,' as you put it. But now… Now, I can't justify _not_ taking the risk. The location of that hacienda was the best lead we've had, and thanks to Crane, it's wasted. Joker escaped, and you—"

"Yeah, I know the reasoning, Bruce. I'm sold. There's nothing like a fear gas hangover to put your uptight cape priorities into perspective."

"Don't be so sure. Selina, the key to playing on Joker's obsessions is to make him jealous, essentially. Present him with another Rogue commanding my attention. So, based on your observations from the _outside_, before we got together, what criminals besides Joker have my undivided attention when they're active?"

"You mean the ones where you'll ignore Jervis or Oswald or even Jonathan completely until the greater threat is safely behind bars? Well, Zsasz certainly. Ra's. KGBeast. Calendar Man—"

"Exactly. The _killers_. Joker's take on Victor Zsasz isn't something we risk, no matter what."

"Agreed, and glad we didn't have this conversation before the fear toxin."

Bruce grunted, then he went on. "If I construct a media narrative to say that Kite-Man is now the number one threat in Gotham and I am devoting all my resources to his capture and his capture alone, nobody—not even Joker—would believe it."

"Agreed, but he would applaud your finally attempting to tell a joke."

Bruce scowled, which intensified the impression of Batman-without-the-mask. When he spoke, it was in the deepest and most ominous gravel:

"Eliminating the themes Joker has already borrowed, there is only one non-lethal criminal we could credibly put forth as holding Batman's full attention when she's active. That criminal... is Catwoman."

There was a long pause.

Bats squeaked overhead.

The computers hummed.

One of the bats began scratching his chin.

Another curled its wings in for a nap.

"You're not suggesting… that we deliberately… _ DELIBERATELY_… focus Joker's attention… JOKER, as in 'the sickest fuck in the history of Gotham' Joker's attention… on _cats?_"

"No, I'm suggesting you get your tail out there and commit a series of cat-crimes, just like old times."

"With the intention of fixating Joker on cats! Bruce, he's not going to break into the art museum with elegance and finesse to steal a Golden Sekhmet, he's going to SmileX kittens and nail them to the Batsignal!"

"Not if we give him a better target."

* * *

As nostalgic as it was burgling the Mariopoulos condo, the morning after was nothing like the old Catwoman crimes. The shower was running when I woke up, so I took juice and a muffin from the breakfast tray and went across the hall to my suite. Had a quick workout, and then met Bruce in the cave.

Reporting to the Batcave for an early morning SitRep is not the ideal way to cool down after a heist and I said so. Bruce grunted, and I checked the news reports at my workstation. The newspapers obviously had no chance to get anything in the print editions, but my cat caper was already on the Times and Daily News websites. GCN and Channel 6 both had a mention on their morning news reports, and WCDE covered it on their a.m. talk show. So far, so good.

"Now I just have to do it again," I thought.

The one downside to all this—apart from deliberately getting Joker to take an interest in cats—was that there was no time to savor the moment. Last night I had my first real cat crime in ages, and I couldn't take ten minutes to process any of it because I had to do it again tonight—and tomorrow, and the night after that. I had to become a one-woman crime wave before smiling Jack picked his next theme, and as if that wasn't enough:

"Have you picked tonight's target yet?"

I had Batman hanging over my shoulder, wanting to check my homework.

"No, I do not. Don't you have an empire to run?"

"It's almost ten o'clock, are you going to have time to do all the research? Get blueprints and floor plans, find what kind of alarm system they have—"

"Yes, Bruce, I will have that time because I'm not stopping to come over there and shove a batarang up your nose."

No grunt, which meant he wasn't going to be put off for more than five minutes. I paged through the Times's _Lifestyle_ section, which usually turned up a lead or two back in the day. But it's amazing how different it is scrolling through text on a computer screen compared to casually reading a newspaper while I sipped my morning coffee.

"By the way, I stopped at One-PP last night and informed Commissioner Muskelli what we were doing."

"Ah," I said, trying to hide my disappointment. "I guess that's for the best. If I'm going to rack up enough cat crimes to get the media attention we're after, some industrious policeman is bound to come knocking on our door asking questions."

He must have sensed that I was only saying it out loud to convince myself, because he took over the narrative with a lot more authority.

"Precisely. And I can't have that. So Batman informed the commissioner that this is a staged crime spree for the purpose of baiting Joker. He's given Major Crimes the directive that, since there is no actual evidence of a connection between Selina Kyle of Cat-Tales and Catwoman the notorious cat burglar, and since Selina Kyle is living with Bruce Wayne whose wealth and position make him a dangerous enemy to have—"

That did it. Something snapped. I slammed the desk which jostled the keyboard and shut off the view screen.

"Oh, I hate this. Hiding behind your money now, like I'm not a grown-up villainess who can threaten and blackmail on my own behalf."

"Hardly. You're still perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, I know that, Selina. But this situation exists, it isn't something I contrived. We _are_ together. I _am_ the most powerful man in the city, and any commissioner or D.A. with political ambitions is going to think long and hard before allowing us to be disturbed. That is a reality neither you nor I lifted a finger to create, but we may as well take advantage of it. Catwoman is Batman's problem and the police will stay out of it. Muskelli doesn't mind his men thinking what they will about his motives. He's the only one who will know you're not as bad as you seem, and you're be the only one who knows that he's not."

Irony, line one. I hate when he does that.

"I still get first crack at Jonathan," I grumbled.

"Yes, Crane is yours. You're entitled."

"Meow."

* * *

The next week saw a one-woman crime wave: A Stradivarius violin (on loan to Katrina Catterall at the Gotham Philharmonic), a perfume flacon fashioned by Rene Lalique (depicting a trio of silhouetted cats), a heraldic crest (with the central shield flanked by a magnificent pair of lions), a Ming vase (covered in tigers and dragons), and a gold watch with a diamond encrusted face commissioned by a silent film star (famous for her depiction of an actual cat-woman in the silent classic Jaguar Goddess of the Maya). Batman failed to prevent Catwoman's escaping with the last, and she refused to give it back. She said when the Joker business was over, he would just have to find her lair and attempt to recover it.

Much as he abhorred the idea of a rendezvous arising from a Joker operation, he had no time to argue. Preparations were under way for the opening of The Wayne Animal Sanctuary, and Foundation insiders were amazed at the personal interest Bruce was taking in the event. He commissioned special artwork for the banners, pulled strings with the city to have them displayed on all the street lights down Fifth, Sixth, Park Avenue, Madison and Broadway. He even arranged a cross-promotion with the caterer.

As always, everything was crafted so assumptions about the public Bruce Wayne would mask Batman's hidden agenda. The savvy would see the big Hirschfeld-style drawing of the cat on all the banners and advertising, and they would titter how Wayne was so besotted with Selina. The envious would see the prominence of the caterer's name on every sign and banner, and they would assume the dumb trust fund fop trying to play negotiator couldn't swing a simple deal with a caterer without giving away the store. No one would suspect a web of neurolinguistic programming, eye accessing cues and subliminals. Yet there were a dozen repetitions of the word "Ha-ha" hidden in the cat's fur, the 5 in 5 mile Catering was drawn to resemble an S. The emphasis in all promotional materials was on Bruce Wayne himself rather than the Foundation, and as much as it galled him, he even permitted one of the press releases to go out with a typographical error. Result, the DJ on one talk show and the Channel 10 anchor both read his name as "Brucie."

The result: Bruce and Selina were confident on the morning of the ribbon cutting that they were heading into a hellish nightmare of a Joker-trap. HAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

* * *

To be continued…


	10. Better Than Cats

**Don't Fear the Joker  
**Chapter 10: Better than Cats

* * *

Bruce and Selina arrived separately at the Wayne Animal Sanctuary the morning of the opening. Selina wanted to slip in before any press arrived, while Bruce would make an entrance with a few hand-picked members of the Foundation board. The restored building had a small portico at the front entrance, and volunteers had already arrived to set up an ad hoc stage. Selina nodded as they explained their plan, placing stanchions at the base of the stairs so the media, shelter staff and onlookers could congregate at the bottom while Bruce and Lucius Fox said a few words from the top step before opening the doors.

It really was the best plan: giving the press a definite place to stand and a specific spot to point their cameras. The WAS Building itself was an admirable piece of Old Gotham architecture, but the construction on the street was an eyesore. It might not be the most gentrified avenue in Gotham, but it was much nicer than it looked with all those traffic cones, torn up sidewalks, mounds of gravel and stacks of cinder block lying around. It would be a shame if the press framed their shots with all that temporary dirt and muck in the picture, making this otherwise pleasant neighborhood look like a dump. Selina agreed it would be a shame, and she managed to ignore the implication that the "bad timing" (read: scheduling the opening and holding a press event when all this construction was going on) was somehow Bruce's fault.

Since she had time to kill, she sidestepped the construction and walked down the street in search of a coffee shop, diner or bodega. Her assignment was to bring coffee, juice and bottled water to the volunteers, a thoughtful, impromptu gesture from Bruce's girlfriend which would introduce a preemptive SmileX inhibitor into their systems.

Spotting a little storefront with one of those sidewalk blackboards out front advertising the daily specials, Selina headed towards it. Her crisp walk slowed, however, when she got closer. There was nothing unusual about the store, the blackboard, or the girl squatting down in front of it to write out the day's menu. It was the man standing over her that caught Selina's eye. The man who, from a distance, seemed to be correcting the girl's spelling…

Selina resumed walking towards them, masking her suspicion in a friendly smile.

"'Lina, you're here early."

"And you're here why?" she asked playfully.

"How could I miss the opening of the 'Sanity Can Weary' Manual?" The girl writing on the blackboard looked up at this bizarre turn of phrase, and Edward Nigma scowled down at her. "Get on with your own business. You're not being paid to eavesdrop," he said harshly.

"He means the Wayne Animal Sanctuary," Selina explained politely. "He likes anagrams."

"He likes Benjamin Franklin, dat's all I care about," the girl said in a thick Jamaican accent. She went inside, and Eddie smiled impishly.

"I paid her two hundred dollars to add something to the menu."

Selina glared at the sign with fraying patience. The smoothie of the day seemed improbable, so without bothering to work out the anagram, she took a guess:

"Peach and lime?"

"Maniac helped," Eddie nodded, assuming she had worked it out and pleased that his efforts were appreciated.

"You're the maniac?"

"I must be if I'm going to help you after the way you've been carrying on," he said, following her inside and then waiting while she made her purchase. He fell into easy step beside her as she walked back up the street, but waited until the drinks were delivered before he continued. "All those cat-crimes and then the banners for this place with the '5 mile' and the HA-HAs, you think I can see what you're up to?"

"You don't approve? I figured you'd be enjoying the cat crimewave almost as much as I am."

"You can't spell 'bait' without the 'I,' 'Lina. Know what you get when you try?"

They had resumed strolling down the street once Selina dropped off the drinks at the sanctuary, but she still gave him a cautionary stare before speaking.

"Not funny," she said simply.

"No, it's not. With _I, Bat_ making speeches on the dais, he's not going to be much use to you when Smiling Jack shows up. So you must be planning to take him down yourself. You think you can get away with it because Ivy and Scarecrow have already gone after him, am I right? You're not a lone Rogue going white hat, you're one of three. Well, if I'm here too, then you're one of four."

Selina stopped mid-step, her scowl melting into a soft smile.

"You really are very sweet sometimes," she said softly.

"Nah, I'm just pissed after that game show stunt. _ Death by Stupidity,_ that really should have been mine. Clown gotta pay—an anagram for which is 'Long paw cat-toy,' by the way. That's a nice one to have in your back pocket today."

"Thank you," Selina said, accepting the gift for what it was, even though anagrams weren't her style.

* * *

Nightwing took his position in Times Square on the one roof where he couldn't be spotted by patrons in the Marriot's rotating restaurant. He wasn't thrilled about his assignment, but he understood the need. Joker was a perpetual wildcard, and there was always a chance that he would choose some target other than the one Batman picked for him. With Bruce Wayne hosting that event, Selina attending, and Tim and Cassie undercover as the animal shelter staff, somebody had to be present in the city, just in case.

When Joker did make his move at the shelter, it would be in front of TV cameras. Nightwing would see on the jumbotron and would make his way towards the action as fast as he could. On the way, he would spot any mass migration of vines or a posse of hatted drones headed in the same direction.

* * *

The news outlets wouldn't normally cover the opening of an animal shelter, but a personal appearance by Bruce Wayne was another matter. News vans serpentined the construction, and the print journalists who arrived early joked about the terrible puns that might ensue between the Ken and Barbie anchors: "There was an awful snarl at the opening of the Wayne Animal Sanctuary today, Ken, but it wasn't from a dog or a cat—it was the _traffic_."

The shelter staff were dropped off from a Foundation-owned SUV. Selina kept a sharp eye on Eddie when they arrived, but seeing no indications that he recognized Cassie, she slipped him a SmileX inhibitor and made a discreet exit.

Finally the limos appeared, clogging the already crowded street. Bruce Wayne's appearance brought the usual frenzy of shouted questions and flickering cameras. He ignored it all, figuring the press would have their fill by the end of the day.

Lucius Fox began with the usual opening remarks for events of this kind. He began with a brief history of the Wayne Foundation, during which, a rude fellow in the back seemed to be checking his watch…

Catwoman reached her position. The six story building next to the sanctuary made a purrfect cat-bird seat. From there, she could look down on the sanctuary roof, which was the only viable spot to launch an attack on those standing on the stage. The south corner in particular had the best angle to avoid hitting the edge of the portico when you jumped down…

Lucius made a brief mention of the original Wayne Animal Sanctuary on Jackson Street, its first pet adoption day, and how quickly it outgrew the location. The rude fellow began _shaking_ his watch and holding it to his ear…

Catwoman's eyes narrowed as she looked down and saw a figure touching her toes, stretching out a leg and lunging from side-to-side, and finally, jogging in place. Harley Quinn was warming up before her attack…

Lucius was segueing to a few brief remarks about the historic building where they now stood, a fine piece of Old Gotham renovated for such a fine purpose, when the rude fellow started twirling his fingers like a show director signaling to wrap it up. "Not brief enough, Foxhound!" he called out. Lucius glanced at Bruce, who just shrugged.

"Well then, without further ado, let me introduce the man we're all here to see, the head of the Wayne Foundation, Bruce Wayne."

* * *

As Bruce moved to the microphone, there was a soft click and the light on its base switched from green to red. An experienced public speaker, he started to make the usual joke, signaling his good humor in the face of technical difficulties—when he was interrupted by a loud rumble that sounded like rolling thunder coming from the speakers. The strange noise silenced the crowd, but after a moment this ominous silence was broken by a trill of musical notes.

4 notes. Woodwinds. And a man in a scruffy cat costume emerged from the construction pit and struck a pose.

4 more notes sounded. It was a flute. And another cat-man with scruffy fur but elaborate make-up crawled up from a manhole.

A few more instruments got into the act—percussion drawing out the teasing feline trills as the next cat-henchmen appeared, and brass punctuating Harley's tumbling arrival from the roof.

In the crowd, Eddie closed his eyes and shook his head slowly, trying to block out the realization of the horror to come:

_"Are you blind when you're born?"_ a disembodied voice sang.

Joker…

_"Can you see in the dark?" _

Cats…

_"Would you look at a king?" "Would you sit on his throne?"_

Joker and Cats…

_"Can you say of your bite that it's worse than your bark?"_

"Joker you horse's ass," Eddie grimaced.

_"Because jellicles are and jellicles do.  
Jellicles do and jellicles would.  
Jellicles would and jellicles can.  
Jellicles can and jellicles do."_

The rest of the prologue from musical _Cats_ was mercifully drowned out by cries and screams as the Jellicle Henchmen brandished Ginsu-knife claws at the crowd. The move held any would-be heroes in check while a goggle-wearing Harley spun Bruce into a choke hold and placed a vicious-looking stun gun to his throat.

Eddie's eyes widened at the spectacle. Not having any great affection for the victim, he cared nothing about the blue sparks sizzling on the end of the weapon. His only interest was in Selina's reaction, for the goggled-figure was certainly Harley Quinn, but she was no cat-imposter. The floppy harlequin ears hanging down on each side of her head and red and black scarf around her neck left no doubt at all about her intended identity. She was the inspiration for the Gotham Post's goggles: _Aviator Snoopy._ Restored to their canine source, the goggles had never looked less feline, and Eddie was wildly curious if Selina would appreciate the moment—since news cameras were clearly broadcasting the sight all over Gotham—or if her concern for that obnoxious Wayne would override her moment of triumph.

Unfortunately he couldn't see her reaction because she was nowhere to be seen. He craned his neck, looking past civilians holding up their cell phones to record their own pictures and video. He stood on his toes peering over the print photographers jostling for better angles without incurring the wrath of the henchmen. He hopped up and down, catching glimpses of the television cameras at the very front… No Selina. No Selina anywhere. The conniving hellcat had pulled a Bat-vanish!

* * *

Catwoman watched the proceedings with the icy detachment of a villainess. Wayne had picked this target and done everything possible to make himself the bullseye. The psychopath holding the stun gun to his neck was merely a sign that he'd succeeded. She wasn't there to cringe for Bruce or for Batman; she was there to see what happened next.

She saw. With Harley holding Bruce Wayne hostage, the Jellicle Henchmen herded the crowd inside the building. The heckler from the back removed his hat and trench coat to reveal Joker's usual purple tailcoat. Instead of the dress shirt and ascot underneath, he wore a vintage t-shirt reading "Faster, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!" And he had augmented his usual white pallor with the painted noseleather, whisker spots and stripes of a _Cats_ chorus extra.

He posed for a minute, modeling his new look for the cameras, while Bruce Wayne continued to squirm in Harley's grasp.

* * *

GCN broke into their regular "Mid-Day Newsroom" broadcast, Channel 6 preempted _The Young and the Restless_, and Channel 11 interrupted a rerun of _Charmed_. Anyone in Gotham within view of a television saw the scene unfolding inside the animal shelter: Joker apologized to "Brucie" for the theatrics—but assured him it really was for his own good in the long run. Then he backhanded him free of Harley and into a pyramid of cages stacked along the wall. He ordered Harley to the roof, and Aviator Snoopy Quinn gave a thumbs up, placed her hands on an invisible throttle, and made airplane noises as she steered herself out the door. "Mr. Bigglesworth!" Joker called, pulling Bruce off the floor. One of the henchmen—presumably Mr. Bigglesworth—rolled over an office chair from behind the reception desk. He tied Bruce to the chair with "cat gut twine," while Joker explained to the crowd why Harley would not be present for the rest of the festivities. It seemed the last time Joker "went out for a bit of fun," Nightwing had crashed the party. That would not occur again.

"No, no, no, that's a square knot," Joker cried, unable to tell the Nightwing story properly when Mr. Bigglesworth was making such a mess of things. "I said to make a cat's cradle! A cat's cradle made from cat gut, get it? HAHAHAHAHAAAAA—So anyway, Brucie, there I was at the flower show. Had all the hostages lined up, ready to have a little flora-fun with the orchid-lovin' loonies, just to pass the time until Batsy arrived. When who comes crashing through the ceiling? Was it Batman? No, it was not. It was Batman-Lite, that silly ass Nightwing. HAHAHAHA-**_NOT!_** Not what I had in mind, Brucie, but for prancing around the petunias, it did no real harm. Not so today. Today we must have the real thing. Only the one true Bat-creep will do, no bridge and tunnel substitutes."

* * *

Batman-Lite had left his position as soon as the news broke. He reached the shelter in under eight minutes and spotted Catwoman in position on the roof next door.

"We're clear," he announced as he landed next to her. "No vines on the way, no ice drifts, no crows, no marauding gangs carrying umbrellas or wearing hats."

"Good," Selina nodded, offering Nightwing a small phone-size viewscreen with more television coverage from inside the shelter.

"What station is this?" he asked, not recognizing the angle from the footage he'd seen on the jumbotron.

"None of them. B didn't want to rely on the news stations, so we've got our own hidden cameras and microphones installed."

"Figures," Nightwing grunted. "So what'd I miss? Took me almost ten minutes to get here from the square. What's Joker been doing?"

"Monologing," Catwoman said through clenched teeth.

"Mono… You mean spelling out his whole plan like in the movies?"

Selina took a deep breath. "Spelling it out like in the movies" implied coherence, a logical chain of thought linking one idea to the next which didn't really happen when Joker had an audience. But she breathed in deeply all the same, preparing to summarize the rambling psychotic mess of a master plan with the detached, slightly bored delivery of a secretary reading back a dictated letter:

"The problem with 'Catty' is all she does is steal stuff. Where's the funny? And wouldn't 'this whole cat-thing' be so much more hilarious if there were kitten grenades involved. Mew-mew-mew-kaboom. But the thing is, Catty is Bruce's girl. Joker may have had his fun with fear, twos, pigeons and plants, but when it comes to educating Catwoman on how to do the whole cat-thing properly, that honor really should go to Bruce—Bruce who has such a fantastic sense of humor to begin with, just look at his track record with the ladies. Everyone knows if you want to make time with the honeys, you've got to make 'em _laugh_. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

"So we know Bruce has it in him, it's just a matter of getting it out, and that requires a Really Bad Day. To bring this about, Joker's taken these hostages and done it in front of TV cameras so Batsy is sure to see. Joker will then capture Batsy when he shows and plop him in a big cat cage. He will then set the cage on fire—again in front of the TV cameras, so this time Catty will see. Catty will show up to save him, yadda-yadda-yadda, Catty dumps Brucie for Batman, right there in front of Bruce (cause women are like that, ha-ha), which will turn Brucie into a magnificent Jokeresque villain with a grudge against cats…"

* * *

"Moment like that: life saved, debt of gratitude, guy with a square jaw, gal with big boobs… Hearts and flowers and fireworks, Brucie. Hearts and flowers and fireworks. You're gonna get your heart broken, my friend, shredded up by claws and batarangs. And then, then you'll understand. Then you will see the light, Brucie, HAHAHAHAHA! Kitten grenades for everybody! Why that company of yours, you can put them out by the thousands. An exploding kitten in every pot! … Eh, that's not quite right is it? Never mind, we'll work on the slogans later. Point is, Bruce, you've got _resources_. Why you could be the next Lex Luthor—but without the stupid Superman fixation. I mean he's so constipated. _The Alien_ this and _The Alien_ that…"

Edward Nigma was not one of those villains so blinded by hatred that he couldn't recognize and his enemy's talents. Watching Wayne's face as Joker expounded the Really Bad Day scenario, he couldn't help but admire his foe's acting. The transition from guileless bewilderment to incredulous horror, it really was an impressive performance.

One impressive performance deserved another, and Eddie had just about worked out how to perform with the two henchmen called Sylvester and Scratchy. He had been hanging back among the hostages, keeping as much distance as he could between himself and the henchmen. The other hostages probably thought he was a coward, but he was more afraid of being recognized than being filleted. Now he walked boldly up to the henchman called Scratchy and asked if it would be possible to use the toilet. He pointed helpfully towards the restroom door, and Scratchy agreed. When the episode concluded, Eddie thanked him for the simple courtesy:

"Thanks, Mr. Bigglesworth."

"I'm Scratchy," the henchman replied.

"Noooo," Eddie said, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. "Why you're the spitting image of Mr. Bigglesworth. Much more than these other guys. Look, I have some experience in this henchman naming business, and if Mr. Bigglesworth is one of the names on the table, it's simply criminal to award it to anyone else. Don't you agree?"

Eddie turned to the nearest hostage, who was a teenage girl in a polo shirt with the shelter name and logo embroidered on the pocket, obviously a member of the staff. She looked at him blankly, and boy about the same age in a matching shirt sprung to her rescue.

"Yes, absolutely. She agrees. So do I. Mr. Bigglesworth, definitely. It's the eyebrows. You have Mr. Bigglesworth's eyebrows."

"Really?" Eddie said in mock surprise, tilting his head to study the henchman's features better—but in reality pleased the kid was playing along so well. "Here I thought it was his chin."

"Nah, it's his ears," another hostage chimed in. "I would have said his forehead," added another. The debate built until, with a collective gasp, the group realized they were _all_ correct. _ Every detail_ of the henchman's physical features matched the original. Scratchy did look just like Mr. Bigglesworth!

* * *

There was no doubt that Catwoman, the world's greatest cat burglar, could have snuck into the animal shelter without Nightwing distracting Harley. But since Quinn had gone to all the trouble to set up a Charlie Brown obstacle course for him, complete with a Snoopy-style dog house, a water bowl, bones, sticks, and a squadron of what appeared to be radio-controlled Woodstocks with hypodermic needle-beaks, he felt it would be rude to disappoint her. So he leapt down to the shelter roof, stomping the trip wire as he landed and causing a shrill air raid warning claxon to sound. The Woodstocks locked on to his location and chased him towards the dog house, while Catwoman climbed quietly down a drain pipe and made her way to the second floor ledge.

She inched her way to a window and saw the most revolting man-size cat-cage inside: 14-feet tall, with carpeted shelves on each side of the door, a water bowl the size of a small sink, and an oil drum covered in dense rope like an oversized scratching post. In case there was any doubt who the cage was meant for, there was a utility belt collar sitting on the shelf, just waiting to be fastened around the occupant's throat.

Catwoman shook her head, slid open the window and headed inside. She could hear bits and pieces of Joker's ranting downstairs: "Now put the camera right here. We're live, aren't we? Not that live-to-tape stuff, because that's just silly…"

All the television cameras were set up in a row, pointed at an open circle in front of the reception desk which Joker was treating as a stage. Bruce was now gagged as well as bound and rolled off to the side, so he would be visible in the camera shot but wouldn't pull focus from Joker's own performance. Joker waved happily at the camera, then gave it the finger, and then he pulled Tim Drake out of a group of hostages and dragged him before the cameras.

"Hello again, Gotham. Joker here. I'm coming to you live from Brucie Wayne's Pet Cemetery. Just take a look at this cute little guy. Had all his shots, well groomed, fresh from a flea dip. But sadly, if no one comes to pick him up soon, he'll have to be put down. You listening, Batsy? You out there? All these adorable doe-eyed hostages will all have to go in order to make room for some cuter captives. So what's keeping you! Scratchy, bring that cute little Asian piece up here, the one with the… Scratchy? Hang on, folks!"

The henchman Scratchy was squinting at his claws, studying his reflection in the largest blade. Eddie, who had been talking to him, quietly pointing out certain features of his appearance that Scratchy had never noticed before, now tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to Joker: it seemed like his boss wanted his attention. Joker repeated the order for Scratchy to bring "the cute little Asian piece" to the stage. As Scratchy pushed his way through the crowd of captives in search of the little Asian piece, there was a sharp thud-thud and he disappeared out of sight, like a swimmer pulled under by a swift and deadly undertow.

"Um, hello!" Joker called out. "We're on the air here. If there's a problem, solve it. Bring me someone cute and cuddly already. I got the Sarah McLachlan ditty all cued up."

A second thud-thud sounded, and Sylvester too was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

"Mr. Bigglesworth?" Joker called. "Oh, Mr. Bigglesworth!" Getting no answer, he turned to Tim. "Wait here." He started to step away from the camera and then thought the better of it. "No, that will never do. Leaving you all alone up here with all of Gotham watching. You better go and I'll wait here." Tim started to step away from the stage and, once again, Joker thought the better of it. He reached out and grabbed Tim's elbow, pulling him back towards the camera. "No that's wrong. I'LL go see what happened to Scratchy. You stay here. But look, Gotham is watching, so don't think you can just say any fool thing that comes into your head. Your line is 'I loved it. It was better than _Cats_. I'm going to see it again and again.' Got it? HAHAHAHA! Good."

A door was kicked open, and Catwoman vaulted into the room, pouncing on one henchman while another tasted whip. He fell backward into a third, who inexplicably felt his legs pulled out from under him by the same whip slash.

"Early! You're too early!" Joker cried. "Tranq her! Tranq her! She'll mess up everything! We haven't even got Batsy yet. Tranq her already. We've got no use for her until we've belled the Bat!"

Bruce had been rocking back and forth on his chair, and he finally succeeded in tipping it over. Joker and the remaining henchmen pulled elongated pistols and fired tranquilizer darts at the spot where Catwoman… _had been_ standing. She wasn't there now, and as they looked around in confusion, she appeared behind Joker.

"Meow," she whispered.

He turned with a punch. She ducked and kicked him in the nuts. He fell to his knees, and she gave his cheek a slice with drugged claws.

"That was… much easier than expected," she said—as the remaining henchman raised his tranq gun to pistol whip her. He missed, smashing the butt of the gun into her shoulder instead of her head when Bruce's wild squirming in the overturned desk chair just happened to kick a metal wheelcover off the chair and into his achilles tendon.

Catwoman stumbled forward, thrown off balance but certainly conscious, and swung back to deliver a punitive punch into the henchman's gut. Since he had bent over from the blow to his ankle, she wound up punching the top of his head instead. It knocked him out, but she cried out louder than he did, grabbing her knuckles in pain.

"MMMPH MPH-KWFF," Bruce called from the floor—presumably a warning that Joker's toxin-saturated body chemistry would shrug off the sedative in her claws. Joker's hands thrust up from his prone position, like the final lunge of an axe-murderer in the final reel of a horror film, and clamped around her waist.

"Nut kicks not funny," he snarled, banging his head into her abs in what was surely the stupidest looking head-butt outside of an animated cartoon.

Catwoman grabbed a handful of his hair in her left hand and used it to pull his head backwards, away from her body. When she had enough room, she punched him in the face with her right—but once again cried out in pain as she shattered the knuckles a-new.

Joker was thrown backward but regrouped, remaining on all fours and growling like a rabid dog.

"You've got to be kidding me," she hissed.

"Hey, 'Lina, try this!" Eddie called, tossing her a…

"Dog catcher's net?" she said, examining the weapon.

Joker glared at it. Rose to his feet, and looked at Nigma with an expression of offended dignity.

"Now that is just insulting," he said coldly.

"Long paw cat-toy," Catwoman declared, as if each word was rich in meaning.

"Come again?" Joker said.

"Long. Paw. Cat. Toy," she repeated. "And I think I speak for all Rogues when I say that."

"She does!" Eddie called out.

"I don't follow," Joker said.

"Long paw," Catwoman said, slipping her whip from the holster again and caressing the leather as it uncoiled from the handle. "Cat toy," she continued, her eyes dancing with playful menace. "For the fear, for the birds, for the plants, for the ice, f—"

"For the riddles!" Eddie added.

"—And, of course, most especially, for the cats… NOT YOURS!" This with a whip slash to Joker's face that made him hop backward. "MUSTN'T TOUCH!" With another to his crotch—and another retreating hop. "WRONG TO TAKE." Slash-slash-slash. "Not yours. Mustn't touch. Wrong to take. Are we clear?"

"Jeez, Catty—"

"I said, **_ARE WE CLEAR?_**"

"I'm just tryin' to help you all find the funny," Joker said feebly.

"Oh, we found the fucking funny, Jack," she snarled. "I just said 'Not yours, mustn't touch, wrong to take.' You know who's laughing his ass off right now? Batman! You've got Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Riddler, and me DOING HIS JOB FOR HIM! You don't think he's the kind of guy who'd find that hilarious?"

"Oops," Joker said, somehow managing a frown in the center of his perpetual grin.

"Oops," Selina echoed, pulling back with her whip handle and bopping him in the center of his forehead. He fell back with his head against the wall, but when he didn't go down, she did it again.

This time his eyes rolled, and he slid slowly down the wall.

The silence held for a long moment, the only sound was Catwoman's breathing, the unspent anger and exertion of the fight coming out in a series of huffing snorts. The moment should have been followed by a swelling of proud satisfaction, except the silence was broken by… applause. One person only, at first, quickly joined by the rest of the hostages. Catwoman turned slowly, her dread building degree-by-degree, until she saw Tim standing apart from the others in a half-circle of TV cameras. It was clear from the stupid grin on his face that he was the insufferable little monster who led the applause.

"I loved it," he recited dutifully. "It was better than _Cats_. I'm going to watch it again and again."

* * *

** Epilogue**

Bruce carried a bowl of ice into Selina's suite and set it down with all the gravity of a waiter at 21 presenting a bottle of Bollinger.

"Scarecrow could have waited," he said, while she laid a washcloth over the top cubes and then rested her hand on the icy surface.

"No, he couldn't."

"Because you wanted your payback now," he said with a lip-twitch.

"After all I've been through, I think I was entitled. Not 'we'll make it up to you on some on vague future date if the stars align just so.' Bad boy bleeds, right here and right now, that's what I needed to see before closing the book on this and moving on. But there was more to it than that and you know it. With Scarecrow up in Arkham tonight…"

"At the same time as Joker," Bruce agreed, the twitch giving way to a full smile. "Only one bed away in the infirmary…"

"Meow. And if you love me, you'll make sure the rest of them join him soon, before they forget they're mad at him."

"I'll do my best," Bruce said, bending down to kiss her cheek.

A long, not entirely comfortable silence followed. Then Bruce cleared his throat.

"You still want to leave it in the closet?"

"Don't you?"

"Me? I'm not the one who inhaled fear toxin," Bruce pointed out.

"No, but you're the one who's had a thorn in your paw since the Stradivarius— I think. Maybe the Lalique or the Ming vase, but I'm pretty sure you were cooking before that."

"Cooking?"

"You know what I mean. It was hiding under that Joker-indigestion look. Now he's out of the picture and _viola_." She removed her hand from the ice long enough for a ta-da gesture at his chin. "The Scowl that Ate Tokyo. Add the mask, we may as well be in the Crispin vault."

He grunted but said nothing more. His intent was to get her fear toxin episode out of the closet, not explore his own reaction to the Catwoman crime spree.

"You're upset that I enjoyed myself," she said frankly.

"No," he said instantly.

"Liar."

"I am not. Selina, I—"

"If not to me, then to yourself."

"Impossible woman," Bruce declared under his breath.

"Scowl that Ate Tokyo," she repeated, pointing to his chin, and then winced and rearranged the washcloth before setting her knuckles gently on the ice again.

"I may have thought, just for a few fleeting moments that first night at Mariopoulos's, that you fell back into your old habits rather quickly. I immediately checked that thought, since the break-ins were part of a strategy I initiated. I asked you to do it. I asked knowing that Catwoman was a consummate professional. It was only your choice of profession that was—"

"Judgmental jackass," Selina said reflexively.

"Less-than-laudable," Bruce concluded.

A second less-than-comfortable silence followed.

"So what's with the scowl?" Selina asked finally.

Bruce swallowed hard, and then regarded her with Batman's most piercing interrogative stare. "If we're cleaning out the closet, you first."

"Ah."

"…"

"Quid pro quo then?"

"…"

"Tit for tat."

"…"

"You know that silent intimidation thing doesn't work on me."

"…"

"Not the way it does on the others anyway."

"…"

"I'm not afraid of you, Bruce. I never have been."

".." The willful intensity behind the stare wavered, and Bruce heard himself taking a deep breath. "Now who's the liar?" he asked bluntly. "It was me you attacked at the hacienda. You only went after Joker when he was the biggest menace in your line of sight. But once I arrived…"

"Yeah, okay. Busted. It was you at the crux of my fear nightmare, but…"

"But not the avenging Dark Knight that strikes terror into criminals," Bruce prompted.

The smile Selina tried so suppress said it all. Not only did _she_ not see him in those terms, she didn't really understand how anyone could. It was one of her peculiar blind spots.

"No, it wasn't 'the avenging Dark Knight,'" she said with a gentle emphasis. "Though I'm sure you'd prefer that."

She couldn't be more wrong. As infuriating as Batman had found those blind spots of hers over the years, this particular one had burrowed its way into his heart. He cherished it. However fierce his anger became, however ferocious his hate, Selina would never see it _defining_ him. It didn't negate everything else he was and everything he could be. It was simply one not-very- significant part of the man she loved.

"So what was the context?" he asked.

"It's fear toxin, Bruce. It doesn't mean anything. Leave it in the closet."

"Selina—"

"You're going to take it personally!"

"Yes! I probably am. When you scream that I think you're gullible and dumb and liken yourself to the demonspawn, yes, I'm afraid whatever is behind those words is something I am going to take very personally. So I am going to ask you just one more time, Catwoman, and this time, I want an answer. What was it you saw in the grip of that—"

"God, Bruce, I mentioned the spawn and you still can't figure it out? Or do you need to hear me say it, is that it?"

"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about," he said gravely.

"You're every bit as good a detective as your press says, Bruce. And, though it does feline pride no good to admit it, you know me very, very well. So if you can't figure it out, if you truly have no idea what I'm talking about, I have to believe it's because you don't want to. Christ… maybe even because there's a grain of truth in it."

Bruce stared, bewildered for a long, long minute. His heart pounded in his chest. He didn't like where this was going. Not one bit. Detective ability was hardly the point. Feline logic had always defied it, defied rational analysis, defied any attempts to classify, analyze or understand it.

"What I said to Joker, it wasn't just cover, Bruce. It wasn't a pose. I did your job today. I took on Joker, and before that I helped you fight Ra's and Jervis and even Eddie… And before this past week, I haven't broken into someplace for profit and come away with 'jewels that don't belong to me-grunt' since… since Tiffany's, I think."

"And you miss it," Bruce said quietly. "I know."

"It's not that, it's… God, you're really going to make me say it. Bruce, this ugly little corner inside of me can't help wondering if that's why you did it."

He blinked.

"Did what?"

"If you took up with me romantically as leverage to shut down Catwoman."

"WHAT?" Bruce gasped, jumping to his feet as if he suddenly feared the chair might explode.

"Hey, it's not like you could catch me any other way," Selina said wryly.

"_THAT'S_ your toxin nightmare?" Bruce yelled, nearly hyperventilating from the shock. "How could you possibly, how… how in a thousand years could you even conceive of… even feline logic, even…"

"It's fear gas, Bruce. Sense doesn't enter into it. What do you want from me? You wanted to know what I experienced and I told you."

"But HOW? How…"

"Some people are afraid of spiders, some people are afraid of ceiling fans."

"And you're afraid I told you my _identity_ and _ moved you into my home_ and only _pretended_ to love you as part of some crimefighting scheme to rid Gotham of a cat burglar?"

"I told you you'd take it personally," Selina said softly.

"If you think I would do that, that I would be capable of—"

"I don't. I didn't. The toxin did. Bruce, it's a chemical. It's just…"

"It's just?"

She shrugged.

Bruce took a deep breath.

"I wasn't going to tell you this," he said finally. "The 'Scowl that Ate Tokyo' was not because you enjoyed your 'cat crimes' a little too much this past week. It was because _I did_."

Selina could only stare. Nutmeg hopped onto the coffee table and began lapping at the melted ice. And Bruce decided the little unacknowledged fear in Selina's psyche that gave birth to that toxin episode must be eradicated entirely. He would wait until she tried to speak, and then he would pummel it as mercilessly as the worst criminal excrescence in Gotham.

"I…" she said finally.

"I am happier now than I have ever been in my life, Selina. And you are a big part of that. Our life together is a part of that. But I enjoyed this past week too. The adversarial thrill reminded me of how much I enjoyed the chase back then. 'Reminded' isn't even the appropriate term, because back then I would never admit it."

He paused just as he would pounding a thug, letting her just recover the power of speech—or try to, before delivering the crucial blow.

Nutmeg, having drunk her fill, now pawed at pellets of former ice cubes floating in the water.

"I—" Selina tried again.

"So please inform that 'ugly little corner inside of you,'" Bruce interrupted, "that the throwback of past week made me realize that I always did want you just as much as you wanted me. Going back to it was so charged—emotionally, sexually, and even physically—that it freaked me out a little. And the Scowl that Ate Tokyo was the result."

"Okay," Selina breathed weakly.

"Just okay?" Bruce said, arching an eyebrow.

"I mean meow."

* * *

Edward Nigma had not done anything as imprudent as driving his fist into a human skull or bruising his knuckles on a jawbone. He didn't need the soothing therapy of an ice bath. He needed a different form of therapy:

7-Across: Starts with a second.

H-Y-P-O-C-R

It didn't fit. "Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins." Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841, the essay entitled Friendship. He needed three more letters. How could that be?

It was all Selina's fault. She caught this, this White Hat Disease from Batman and now she was a carrier. She'd infected him with Cape Plague, and it was high time he took steps to flush this Hero Phage from his system.

* * *

© 2010, Chris Dee

Next:  
Electron 29

(Hm, that's an enigmatic title.)


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